There was, however, one spot left unguarded, and through it Cupid, a veteran sharpshooter, sent a dart.  Mr. Clayton had taken into his service and into his household a poor relation, a sort of cousin several times removed.  This boy—­his name was Jack—­had gone into Mr. Clayton’s service at a very youthful age,—­twelve or thirteen.  He had helped about the housework, washed the dishes, swept the floors, taken care of the lawn and the stable for three or four years, while he attended school.  His cousin had then taken him into the store, where he had swept the floor, washed the windows, and done a class of work that kept fully impressed upon him the fact that he was a poor dependent.  Nevertheless he was a cheerful lad, who took what he could get and was properly grateful, but always meant to get more.  By sheer force of industry and affability and shrewdness, he forced his employer to promote him in time to a position of recognized authority in the establishment.  Any one outside of the family would have perceived in him a very suitable husband for Miss Clayton; he was of about the same age, or a year or two older, was as fair of complexion as she, when she was not powdered, and was passably good-looking, with a bearing of which the natural manliness had been no more warped than his training and racial status had rendered inevitable; for he had early learned the law of growth, that to bend is better than to break.  He was sometimes sent to accompany Miss Clayton to places in the evening, when she had no other escort, and it is quite likely that she discovered his good points before her parents did.  That they should in time perceive them was inevitable.  But even then, so accustomed were they to looking down upon the object of their former bounty, that they only spoke of the matter jocularly.

“Well, Alice,” her father would say in his bluff way, “you ’ll not be absolutely obliged to die an old maid.  If we can’t find anything better for you, there ’s always Jack.  As long as he does n’t take to some other girl, you can fall back on him as a last chance.  He ’d be glad to take you to get into the business.”

Miss Alice had considered the joke a very poor one when first made, but by occasional repetition she became somewhat familiar with it.  In time it got around to Jack himself, to whom it seemed no joke at all.  He had long considered it a consummation devoutly to be wished, and when he became aware that the possibility of such a match had occurred to the other parties in interest, he made up his mind that the idea should in due course of time become an accomplished fact.  He had even suggested as much to Alice, in a casual way, to feel his ground; and while she had treated the matter lightly, he was not without hope that she had been impressed by the suggestion.  Before he had had time, however, to follow up this lead, Miss Clayton, in the spring of 187-, went away on a visit to Washington.