, Richard resolved in his mind several
questions as to his future abode. He could not reconcile his thought
to any of the workingmen's boarding-houses, of which there were five
or six in the slums of the village, where the doorways were greasy,
and women flitted about in the hottest weather with thick woolen
shawls over their heads. Yet his finances did not permit him to
aspire to lodgings much more decent. If he could only secure a small
room somewhere in a quiet neighborhood. Possibly Mrs. Durgin would
let him have a chamber in her cottage. He was beginning life over
again, and it struck him as nearly an ideal plan to begin it on the
identical spot where he had, in a manner, made his first start.
Besides, there was William Durgin for company, when the long nights
of the New England winter set in. The idea smiled so pleasantly in
Richard's fancy that he pushed the plate away from him impatiently,
and picked up his hat which lay on the floor beside the chair.

That evening he moved from the Shackford house to Mrs. Durgin's
cottage in Cross Street. It was not an imposing ceremony. With a
small brown-paper parcel under his arm, he walked from one threshold
to the other, and the thing was done.

VIII

The six months which followed Richard's installment in the office
at Slocum's Yard were so crowded with novel experience that he
scarcely noted their flight. The room at the Durgins, as will
presently appear, turned out an unfortunate arrangement; but
everything else had prospered. Richard proved an efficient aid to Mr.
Simms, who quietly shifted the pay-roll to the younger man's
shoulders. This was a very complicated account to keep, involving as
it did a separate record of each employee's time and special work. An
ancient bookkeeper parts lightly with such trifles when he has a
capable assistant. It also fell to Richard's lot to pay the hands on
Saturdays. William Durgin blinked his surprise on the first occasion,
as he filed in with the others and saw Richard posted at the desk,
with the pay-roll in his hand and the pile of greenbacks lying in
front of him.

"I suppose you'll be proprietor next," remarked Durgin, that
evening, at the supper table.

"When I am, Will," answered Richard cheerily, "you will be on the
road to foreman of the finishing shop."

"Thank you," said Durgin, not too graciously. It grated on him to
play the part of foreman, even in imagination, with Dick Shackford as
proprietor. Durgin