“I think we shall be together a considerable time, Mr. Graham.  If, however, you should be willing to pay Herbert a larger salary, I might feel it only just to release him from his engagement to me.”

“Me pay more’n six dollars a week!” gasped Ebenezer.  “I ain’t quite crazy.  Why, it would take about all I get from the post office.”

“You wouldn’t expect me to take less than I can earn elsewhere, Mr. Graham,” said Herbert.

“No-o!” answered the storekeeper, slowly.  He was evidently nonplused by the absolute necessity of getting another clerk, and his inability to think of a suitable person.

“If Tom Tripp was with me, I might work him into the business,” said Ebenezer, thoughtfully, “but he’s bound out to a farmer.”

An inspiration came to Herbert.  He knew that his mother would be glad to earn something, and there was little else to do in Wayneboro.

“I think,” he said, “you might make an arrangement with my mother, to make up and sort the mail, for a time, at least.”

“Why, so I could; I didn’t think of that,” answered Ebenezer, relieved.  “Do you think she’d come over to-morrow mornin’?”

“If she can’t, I will,” said Herbert.  “I don’t meet Mr. Melville till nine o’clock.”

“So do!  I’ll expect you.  I guess I’ll come over and see your mother this evenin’, and see if I can’t come to some arrangement with her.”

It may be added that Mr. Graham did as proposed, and Mrs. Carr agreed to render him the assistance he needed for three dollars a week.  It required only her mornings, and a couple of hours at the close of the afternoon, and she was very glad to convert so much time into money.

“It makes me feel more independent,” she said.  “I don’t want to feel that you do all the work, Herbert, and maintain the family single-handed.”

The same evening Herbert broached the plan of traveling with Mr. Melville.  As might have been expected, his mother was at first startled, and disposed to object, but Herbert set before her the advantages, both to himself and the family, and touched upon the young man’s need of a companion so skillfully and eloquently that she was at last brought to regard the proposal favorably.  She felt that George Melville was one to whom she could safely trust her only boy.  Moreover, her own time would be partly occupied, owing to the arrangement she had just made to assist in the post office, so that Herbert carried his point.

The tenth of October arrived, the date which George Melville had fixed upon for his departure.  Mrs. Carr had put Herbert’s wardrobe in order, and he had bought himself a capacious carpetbag and an umbrella, and looked forward with eagerness to the day on which their journey was to commence.  He had long thought and dreamed of the West, its plains and cities, but had never supposed that it would be his privilege to make acquaintance with them, at any rate, until he should have become twice his present age.  But the unexpected had happened, and on Monday he and George Melville were to start for Chicago.