After supper, which the lady’s impatience made shorter than my appetite would have dictated, the husband and wife went into the small parlour, closing the door upon us children in the library.  Here I managed to make a pleasant evening, in games with Madge and little Tom upon the floor.  But Philip, though he came in as was his wont, was not to be lured into our play or our talk.  He did not even read, but sat silent and pondering, in no cheerful mood.  I, not reading him as Madge did, knew not what the matter was, and accused him of having vapours, like a girl.  He looked at me heedlessly, in reply, as if he scarce heard.  But Madge, apparently, divined his feeling, and at times respected it, for then she spoke low, and skilfully won me back from my efforts to enliven him.  At other times, his way seemed to irritate her, and she hinted that he was foolish, and then she was extraordinarily smiling and adorable to me (always, I now suspect, with the corner of her eye upon him) as if to draw him back to his usual good-fellowship by that method.  But ’twas in vain.  I left at bedtime, wondering what change had come over him.

That night, I learned afterward, Philip slept little, debating sorrowfully in his mind.  He kept his window slightly open at night, in all weather; and open also that night was one of the windows of Mr. and Mrs. Faringfield’s great chamber below.  A sound that reached him in the small hours, of Mrs. Faringfield whimpering and weeping, decided him.  And the next morning, after another silent meal, he contrived to fall into Mr. Faringfield’s company on the way to the warehouse, which they had almost reached ere Phil, very down in the mouth and perturbed, got up his courage to his unpleasant task and blundered out in a boyish, frightened way: 

“If you please, sir, I wished to tell you—­I’ve made up my mind to leave—­and thank you very much for all your kindness!”

Mr. Faringfield stared from under his gathered brows, and asked Phil to repeat the strange thing he had said.

“Leave what, sir?” he queried sharply, when Phil had done so.

“Leave your warehouse, sir; and your house; and New York.”

“What do you mean, my boy?”

And Phil, thankful that Mr. Faringfield had paused to have the talk out ere they should come among the men at the warehouse, explained at first in vague terms, but finally in the explicit language to which his benefactor’s questions forced him, that he seemed, in Master Ned’s mind, to be standing in Ned’s way; that he would not for the world appear to supplant any man’s son, much less the son of one who had been so kind to him; that he had unintentionally been the cause of Ned’s departure the evening before; and that he hoped his going would bring Ned back from the absence which caused his mother grief.  “And I wouldn’t stay in New York after leaving you, sir,” he said, “for ’twould look as if you and I had disagreed.”

To all this Mr. Faringfield replied briefly that Ned was a foolish boy, and would soon enough come back, glad of what welcome he might get; and that, as for Philip’s going away, it was simply not to be heard of.  But Phil persisted, conceding only that he should remain at the warehouse for an hour that morning and complete a task he had left unfinished.  Mr. Faringfield still refused to have it that Phil should go at all.