“I should think the prosperity of Mrs. Harmon
would convince the most negative of agnostics that
there was an overruling Providence, if nothing else
did,” said Sewell. “It’s so
defiant of all law, so delightfully independent of
causation.”
“Well, let Barker alone with her, then,”
said his wife, rising to leave him to the hours of
late reading which she had never been able to break
up.
After agreeing with his wife that he had better leave
Barker alone, Sewell did not feel easy in doing so.
He had that ten-dollar note which Miss Vane had given
him, and though he did not believe, since Evans had
reported Barker’s refusal of his fee, that the
boy would take it, he was still constrained to do
something with it. Before giving it back to her,
he decided at least to see Barker and learn about
his prospects and expectations. He might find
some way of making himself useful to him.
In a state of independence he found Lemuel much more
accessible than formerly, and their interview was
more nearly amicable. Sewell said that he had
been delighted to hear of Lemuel’s whereabouts
from his old friend Evans, and to know that they were
housed together. He said that he used to know
Mrs. Harmon long ago, and that she was a good-hearted,
well-meaning woman, though without much forecast.
He even assented to Lemuel’s hasty generalisation
of her as a perfect lady, though they both felt a
certain inaccuracy in this, and Sewell repeated that
she was a woman of excellent heart and turned to a
more intimate inquest of Lemuel’s life.
He tried to find out how he employed his leisure time,
saying that he always sympathised with young men away
from home, and suggesting the reading-room and the
frequent lectures at the Young Men’s Christian
Union for his odd moments. He learned that Lemuel
had not many of these during the week, and that on
Sundays he spent all the time he could get in hearing
the different noted ministers. For the rest,
he learned that Lemuel was very much interested in
the city, and appeared to be rapidly absorbing both
its present civilisation and its past history.
He was unsmilingly amused at the comments of mixed
shrewdness and crudity which Lemuel was betrayed into
at times beyond certain limits of diffidence that
he had apparently set himself; at his blunders and
misconceptions, at the truth divined by the very innocence
of his youth and inexperience. He found out that
Lemuel had not been at home since he came to Boston;
he had expected to go at Thanksgiving, but it came
so soon after he had got his place that he hated to
ask; the folks were all well, and he would send the
kind remembrances which the minister asked him to give
his mother. Sewell tried to find out, in saying
that Mrs. Sewell and himself would always be glad
to see him, whether Lemuel had any social life outside
of the St. Albans, but here he was sensible that a
door was shut against him; and finally he had not the
