When I was about sixteen, however, an outside human influence, not written in black and white, came into the current of my existence.  About that time, my uncle took into his firm, as junior partner, a young man who had long been a clerk in the house.  After his promotion he often came home with my uncle to dinner.  I think this was done, perhaps, with a view of civil treatment, on the first occasion; but afterward, it was continued because my uncle could not bear to leave business when he left the office, and because he could talk on the matters which were dearer to him than his dinner, with this junior, in whom he took unqualified delight.  He often wrote letters in the evening, which my uncle dictated, and he sometimes did not go away till eleven o’clock at night.  The first time he came, I did not notice him very much.  It was not unusual for Uncle Leonard to be accompanied by some gentleman who talked business with him during dinner; and being naturally shy, and moreover, on this occasion, in the middle of a very interesting book, at once timid and indifferent, I slipped away from the table the moment that I could.  But upon the third or fourth occasion of his being there, I became interested, finding often a pair of handsome eyes fixed on me, and being occasionally addressed and made a partner in the conversation.  Uncle Leonard very rarely talked to me, and I think found me in the way when Richard Vandermarck made the talk extend to me.

But this was the beginning of a very much improved era for me.  I lost my shyness, and my fear of Uncle Leonard, and indeed, I think, my frantic thirst for books, and became quite a young lady.  We were great friends; he brought me books, he told me about other people, he opened a thousand doors of interest and pleasure to me.  I never can enumerate all I owed to him.  My dull life was changed, and the house owed him gratitude.

We began to have the gas lighted in the parlor, and even Uncle Leonard came in there sometimes and sat after dinner, before he went up into that dreary library above.  I think he rather enjoyed hearing us talk gayly across his sombre board; he certainly became softer and more human toward me after Richard came to be so constantly a guest.  He gave me more money to spend, (that was always the expression of his feelings, his language, so to speak;) he made various inquiries and improvements about the house.  The dinners themselves were improved, for a horrible monotony had crept into the soups and sauces of forty years; and Uncle Leonard was no epicure; he seemed to have no more stomach than he had heart; brain and pocket made the man.

I think unconsciously he was much influenced by Richard, whose business talent had charmed him, and to whom he looked for much that he knew he must soon lose.  He was glad to make the house seem pleasant to him, and he was much gratified by his frequent coming.  And Richard was peculiarly a man to like and to lean upon.  Not in any way brilliant, and with no literary tastes, he was well educated enough, and very well informed; a thorough business man.  I think he was ordinarily reserved, but our intercourse had been so unconventional, that I did not think him so at all.  He was rather good-looking, tall and square-shouldered, with light-brown hair and fine dark-blue eyes; he had a great many points of advantage.