Perhaps a little formal and pompous for some people, but an admirable and conciliatory letter for the first citizen of Brampton.  Written under such trying circumstances, with I know not how many erasures and false starts, it is little short of a marvel in art:  neither too much said, nor too little, for a relenting parent of Mr. Worthington’s character, and I doubt whether Talleyrand or Napoleon or even Machiavelli himself could have surpassed it.  The second letter, now that Mr. Worthington had got into the swing, was more easily written.  “My dear Robert” (it said), “I have made up my mind to give my consent to your marriage to Miss Wetherell, and I am ready to welcome you home, where I trust I shall see you shortly.  I have not been unimpressed by the determined manner in which you have gone to work for yourself, but I believe that your place is in Brampton, where I trust you will show the same energy in learning to succeed me in the business which I have founded there as you have exhibited in Mr. Broke’s works.  Affectionately, your Father.”

A very creditable and handsome letter for a forgiving father.  When Mr. Worthington had finished it, and had addressed both the envelopes, his shame and vexation had, curious to relate, very considerably abated.  Not to go too deeply into the somewhat contradictory mental and cardiac processes of Mr. Worthington, he had somehow tricked himself by that magic exercise of wielding his pen into thinking that he was doing a noble and generous action:  into believing that in the course of a very few days—­or weeks, at the most, he would have recalled his erring son and have given Cynthia his blessing.  He would, he told himself, have been forced eventually to yield when that paragon of inflexibility, Bob, dictated terms to him at the head of the locomotive works.  Better let the generosity be on his (Mr. Worthington’s) side.  At all events, victory had never been bought more cheaply.  Humiliation, in Mr. Worthington’s eyes, had an element of publicity in it, and this episode had had none of that element; and Jethro Bass, moreover, was a highwayman who had held a pistol to his head.  In such logical manner he gradually bolstered up again his habitual poise and dignity.  Next week, at the latest, men would point to him as the head of the largest railroad interests in the state.

He pushed back his chair, and rose, merely indicating the result of his labors by a wave of his hand.  And he stood in the window as Jethro Bass got up and went to the table.  I would that I had a pen able to describe Jethro’s sensations when he read them.  Unfortunately, he is a man with few facial expressions.  But I believe that he was artist enough himself to appreciate the perfections of the first citizen’s efforts.  After a much longer interval than was necessary for their perusal, Mr. Worthington turned.

“G-guess they’ll do,” said Jethro, as he folded them up.  He was too generous not to indulge, for once, in a little well-deserved praise.  “Hain’t underdone it, and hain’t overdone it a mite hev you?  M-man of resource.  Callate you couldn’t hev beat that if you was to take a week to it.”