"I can't say I was looking for you. You might have dropped me a line; you were politer when you left. Why do you come back, and why did you go away?" demanded the old man, with abrupt fierceness. The last four years had bleached him and bent him and made him look very old. "I didn't like the idea of Blandmann & Sharpe, for one thing," said Richard, "and I thought I liked the sea." "And did you?" "No, sir! I enjoyed seeing foreign parts, and all that." "Quite the young gentleman on his travels. But the sea didn't agree with you, and now you like the idea of Blandmann & Sharpe?" "Not the least in the world, I assure you!" cried Richard. "I take to it as little as ever I did." "Perhaps that is fortunate. But it's going to be rather difficult to suit your tastes. What _do_ you like?" "I like you, cousin Lemuel; you have always been kind to me--in your way," said poor Richard, yearning for a glimmer of human warmth and sympathy, and forgetting all the dreariness of his uncared-for childhood. He had been out in the world, and had found it even harder-hearted than his own home, which now he idealized in the first flush of returning to it. Again he saw himself, a blond-headed little fellow with stocking down at heel, climbing the steep staircase, or digging in the clay at the front gate with the air full of the breath of lilacs. That same penetrating perfume, blown through the open hall-door as he spoke, nearly brought the tears to his eyes. He had looked forward for years to this coming back to Stillwater. Many a time, as he wandered along the streets of some foreign sea-port, the rich architecture and the bright costumes had faded out before him, and given place to the fat gray belfry and slim red chimneys of the humble New England village where he was born. He had learned to love it after losing it; and now he had struggled back through countless trials and disasters to find no welcome. "Cousin Lemuel," said Richard gently, "only just us two are left, and we ought to be good friends, at least." "We are good enough friends," mumbled Mr. Shackford, who could not evade taking the hand which Richard had forlornly reached out to him, "but that needn't prevent us understanding each other like rational creatures. I don't care for a great deal of fine sentiment in people who run away without so much as thank you." "I was all wrong!" "That's what folks always say, with the delusion that it makes everything all right." "Surely it help,--to admit it." "That depends; it generally doesn't. What do you propose to do?" "I hardly know at the moment; my plans are quite in the air." "In the air!" repeated Mr. Shackford. "I fancy that describes them. Your father's plans were always in the air, too, and he never got any of them down." "I intend to get mine down." "Have you saved by anything?" "Not a cent." "I thought as much."