twice as if he took to himself no small amount of personal credit, not
to say glory, for having been in so remarkable an accident, and come out
of it so well.

Ford's return, when he should make it, was to take him to a great,
pompous, stylish, crowded "up-town boarding-house," in one of the
fashionable streets of the great city. There was no wonder at all that
wise people should wish to get out of such a place in such hot weather.
Still it was the sort of home Ford Foster had been acquainted with all
his life; and it was partly owing to that, that he had become so
prematurely "knowing."

He knew too much, in fact, and was only too well aware of it. He had
filled his head with an unlimited stock of boarding-house information,
as well as with a firm persuasion that there was little more to be
had,--unless, indeed, it might be scraps of such outside knowledge as he
had now been picking up over on Long Island.

In one of the large "parlor-chambers" of the boarding-house, at about
eight o'clock that evening, a middle-aged gentleman and lady, with a
fair, sweet-faced girl of about nineteen, were sitting near an open
window, very much as if they were waiting for somebody. Such a kind,
motherly lady! She was one of those whom no one can help liking, after
seeing her smile once, or hearing her speak.

Ford Foster himself could not have put in words what he thought about
his mother. And yet he had no difficulty whatever in expressing his
respect for his father, or his unbounded admiration for his pretty
sister Annie.