“Not alone, aunt.  If he is dead, you have got a nephew.”

“Well, Ferdinand, I’m glad to see you, and I shall be glad to have you pay me a good long visit.  But how can you be away from your place so long?  Did Mr. Stewart give you a vacation?”

“No, aunt; I left him.”

“For good?”

“Yes.”

“Left a place where you was gettin’ a thousand dollars a year!” said the old lady in accents of strong disapproval.

“Yes, aunt.”

“Then I think you was very foolish,” said Deborah with emphasis.

“Perhaps you won’t, when you know why I left it.”

“Why did you?”

“Because I could do better.”

“Better than a thousand dollars a year!” said Deborah with surprise.

“Yes, I am offered two thousand dollars in San Francisco.”

“You don’t say!” ejaculated Deborah, letting her stocking drop in sheer amazement.

“Yes, I do.  It’s a positive fact.”

“You must be a smart clerk!”

“Well, it isn’t for me to say,” said Ferdinand, laughing.

“When be you goin’ out?”

“In a week, but I thought I must come and bid you good-by first.”

“I’m real glad to see you, Ferdinand,” said Aunt Deborah, the more warmly because she considered him so prosperous that she would have no call to help him.  But here she was destined to find herself mistaken.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Aunt and nephew.

“I don’t think I can come here till to-morrow, Aunt Deborah,” said Ferdinand, a little later.  “I’ll stay at the hotel to-night, and come round with my baggage in the morning.”

“Very well, nephew, but now you’re here, you must stay to tea.”

“Thank you, aunt, I will.”

“I little thought this mornin’, I should have Henry’s son to tea,” said Aunt Deborah, half to herself.  “You don’t look any like him, Ferdinand.”

“No, I don’t think I do.”

“It’s curis too, for you was his very picter when you was a boy.”

“I’ve changed a good deal since then, Aunt Deborah,” said her nephew, a little uneasily.

“So you have, to be sure.  Now there’s your hair used to be almost black, now it’s brown.  Really I can’t account for it,” and Aunt Deborah surveyed the young man over her spectacles.

“You’ve got a good memory, aunt,” said Ferdinand with a forced laugh.

“Now ef your hair had grown darker, I shouldn’t have wondered,” pursued Aunt Deborah; “but it aint often black turns to brown.”

“That’s so, aunt, but I can explain it,” said Ferdinand, after a slight pause.

“How was it?”

“You know the French barbers can change your hair to any shade you want.”

“Can they?”

“Yes, to be sure.  Now—­don’t laugh at me, aunt—­a young lady I used to like didn’t fancy dark hair, so I went to a French barber, and he changed the color for me in three months.”