CHAPTER VI.

CLIFFORD GOES TO COLLEGE.

Upon his arrival at Professor Harding’s home Clifford received a most cordial welcome, and was at once made to feel that he was one of the family, and the atmosphere of peace and refinement of which he had always been conscious in connection with this household was most congenial to him.

The next day was spent in discussing plans for the future, laying out the work he was to do before the school year opened, and also in making himself useful to Mrs. Harding in a way that won him an even warmer place than he had yet occupied in her heart.

Saturday evening the much anticipated new suit was sent to him, and was duly admired by the whole family.

“Really, Cliff, the squire for once has done the handsome thing,” remarked the professor, as he critically examined the suit. “This is a fine piece of cloth, and everything is first-class.”

“Yes, sir, and I am very much pleased,” Clifford heartily responded, little dreaming to what strategy he owed his fine feathers.

The next morning he dressed himself with great care for church, feeling an unusual pride in his linen, and a thrill of gratitude as well, for Maria had made him some fine shirts and polished them to the last degree with her own hands.

When he came forth from his room he looked every inch the gentleman, and many an eye rested admiringly upon him as he walked down the aisle with the professor’s family and took his seat in their pew.

Squire Talford, not being a church-going man, was not there to observe the change which new linen and fashionably cut garments had made in his bound boy, and he did not once dream of the practical joke that had been played upon him until the following Tuesday, when his own suit came home.

Accompanying it was a note from the tailor, which read thus:

“DEAR SIR: I fear you have made a mistake in the selection of cloth for your suit. I cannot quite understand it, as heretofore you have ordered fine goods; but as your instructions were explicit I have done the best I could and hope you will be satisfied.

“Respectfully yours,

“ABEL BLACK.”

The squire looked perplexed as he read the letter, which, with the bill, had been enclosed in an envelope and slipped under the string which bound the box that contained the suit.

He, however, proceeded to inspect its contents, and the moment his glance fell upon the coarse, rough cloth and he comprehended the situation a furious exclamation burst from him. He snatched the garments from the box and threw them angrily upon a chair.

“The fool!” he snarled, “he has made the biggest blunder of his life—he has made up for me the cloth I ordered for that boy, and, I suppose, has given him a suit of that fine piece of goods. Blast the man! but he shall pay dearly for it. He will never do another stitch of work for me. The idea, to pretend to think that I would wear cloth like this! He must have known better. And yet,” referring to the letter, “he says he is afraid that ‘I made a mistake in my selections, but that my directions were explicit.’ Oh, no, Abel, my friend, you can’t shove the blame off upon me in any such way; I always keep a copy of my letters, and I’ll soon prove to you that this is none of my doing.”

He went to his letter-press, drew forth his book, and turned back to the date on which he had ordered the two suits. After reading it through he began to hunt about his desk for something. Failing to find what he wanted he called out impatiently:

“Maria, Maria Kimberly, where are you? Come here. I want you.”

Presently the door leading into the kitchen was opened and the woman put her head inside the room, curtly inquiring in tones which she always assumed when the squire was out of sorts:

“What’s wanted, squire?”

Then her glance fell upon the new suit lying in a heap on a chair, whereupon her face suddenly took on a more ruddy hue and her eyes began to twinkle appreciatively.

“Did you throw away those samples of cloth that I showed you a week or more ago?” the man demanded.

“I never throw away anything o’ yourn, squire. I leave that for you to do,” said Mrs. Kimberly, somewhat loftily.

“Then where are they?” he asked impatiently.

“Oh, I reckon you’ll find ’em in one o’ the drawers or pigeonholes,” said Maria, coming forward and taking another comprehensive squint at the suit as she did so, the squire meanwhile pulling out and inspecting various drawers with considerable show of irritation.

“What’s that?” Maria inquired, after a moment, and pointing into a drawer where some dark, frayed edges were protruding from beneath a couple of letters.

“Humph!” grunted the squire, as he drew forth the missing samples, and Maria smiled complacently.

Then, adjusting his glasses the man compared the numbers on the tags with those in the copy of the letter which he had written to the tailor, and in which he had given the order for the two suits of clothes. His face was a study as he began to realize that Abel Black was in no way responsible for the “blunder,” for there, in black and white, sure enough, his “instructions were explicit.”

“Thunder and lightning! I don’t understand it. I never did such a thing before in my life!” he muttered, with a very red face, as he was forced to admit to himself that he had blundered in writing the numbers.

“Your new suit’s come, hain’t it, squire? Is there anything wrong about it?” calmly inquired Maria, with the most innocent air imaginable.

“Wrong!” shouted the infuriated man, “I should say there was. I got these numbers misplaced someway in giving my order, and that dunce of a tailor, instead of coming to find out whether I made a mistake or not, has made up for me the cloth I meant Cliff should have, and vice versa.”

“Good land! you don’t say so!” exclaimed Mrs. Kimberly, with every appearance of being greatly astonished. “Sure enough, this is the cloth”—bending to examine it and to hide the convulsive twitching of her mouth—“that I said you could shoot peas through.”

“Just so,” said the squire, bestowing a withering look upon the offensive garments.

“And Cliff’s suit was made off the other goods?” inquired Maria, trying hard not to betray eager interest she experienced in the matter.

“Of course—yes,” seizing the bill and tearing it open. “Here it is charged to me—forty-five dollars! and I suppose that young upstart is strutting around and feeling as fine as a turkeycock in a suit that cost three times what I mean it should.”

A spasmodic, but quickly repressed snort escaped Mrs. Kimberly at this passionate outburst.

“Ahem!” she supplemented, “’tis kind of a tough joke on you, ain’t it, squire?”

The man turned on her with a fierce imprecation.

“Maria Kimberly,” he thundered, “if you ever give it away I’ll make you sorry till your dying day. I should be the laughing-stock of the whole town if it became known.”

“Sure enough, so you would! But mum’s the word, if you say so, squire,” Maria asserted, with another hysterical catch of her breath. Then, with an effort at composure, she inquired: “Does it—the suit—fit you?”

“Fit! Do you suppose I’d put it on—that mass of shoddy?” snapped the man, with angry derision.

“Oh, then, you don’t intend to wear it?” observed Maria, with well-assumed surprise.

“Of course not.”

“But it’ll be almost like throwing away a lot of good money,” said the woman, who rather enjoyed piling on the agony.

The squire groaned, not so much for the loss of the sum which the shoddy suit represented, but because his supposed blunder had resulted in such good fortune for Clifford.

“Perhaps,” Maria remarked, after a moment of reflection, “you can sell it to Tom, the milk-driver; he’s about your build, and I heard him say a while ago that he was goin’ to get him some new clo’s before long.”

This proved to be a happy suggestion, and appealed at once to the discomfited man. Suffice it to say that he made a bargain with the milk-driver later, and so managed to get rid of the obnoxious garments; but for years he was sore over the matter, and could never bear the slightest reference to the subject. To the tailor he simply said that he was disappointed in the suit and ordered another made.

When Maria Kimberly left his presence after the above interview she repaired at once to the kitchen garden, ostensibly to pick “a mess of shell beans” for the morrow’s dinner; but could any one have seen her crouching among the tall bean-poles, and laughing until the tears rained over her face, and she was utterly exhausted with her mirth, he would have thought that Squire Talford’s usually sedate housekeeper had taken leave of her senses.

The days slipped very quickly by to Clifford, who was bending all his energies toward preparing for the ordeal before him.

Professor Harding accompanied him to Cambridge a day or two before the date set for his examinations, to show him about a little, get him settled, and introduce him to some of his old acquaintances, and to give him more confidence.

The young man acquitted himself most creditably, and won honors in mathematics, Greek and Latin, and his teacher felt justly proud of him, and well repaid for his own efforts in his behalf.

After seeing him located in a moderate-priced and homelike boarding-place, with a good woman whom he had known during his own college days, the professor wished him good luck and Godspeed and returned to his own duties in Connecticut.

Clifford set to work in good earnest—every moment of every hour was improved to the utmost, and, to his surprise, he did not find his duties nearly so arduous as he had anticipated.

He had always been very systematic in whatever he had to do, and, possessing a rare power of concentration, he was enabled to commit his lessons with comparative ease.

Thus he found that he would have considerable leisure time, and this he resolved to turn to account to increase his limited resources, and so began to look about for employment. But what to do was the question.

This was answered for him within a week or two by overhearing some of the juniors and seniors complaining of their blurred and unsightly windows, and asserting that they could find no one to do satisfactory cleaning for them.

Acting upon the impulse of the moment, Clifford stepped up to them, and remarked in a straightforward, manly way:

“Gentlemen, I am looking for work to help me through my course—let me try my hand upon your windows.”

They stared at him with a supercilious air for a moment, but as he met their glances with a front as unflinching as their own, and without manifesting the slightest embarrassment on account of his request, one of the number observed:

“Say, let’s try him, boys, the janitors are so rushed they’re no good, and we don’t want any woman prowling about,” and forthwith Clifford had half a dozen orders, and set that very afternoon to begin operations.

From that time he had all he could do at ten and fifteen cents per window, according to size, and his work proved to be so satisfactory that he was frequently offered a tip besides. But this he scorned to accept in every instance.

“Thanks. I have but one price,” he would invariably observe, and never failed to give the exact change.

Generally he was courteously treated by his patrons, but now and then he would meet a snob whose sole aim appeared to be to make him feel the immeasurable distance between a heavy purse and a light one. But even in these cases he proved himself a match for such customers. He would fill his order to the very best of his ability, but he would never take a second one from the same party.

“Very sorry,” he would say, with the utmost politeness, “but I am too busy. I have all the orders I can fill at present. You had better speak to one of the janitors.”

One day he was passing along a corridor with his pail and brushes, when some one, evidently in a hurry, passed him. The next moment the young man paused, turned back and called out in an overbearing tone:

“Say, here! you window-washer; I want to speak to you—I have some work for you to do.”

Clifford’s face flushed a sudden crimson, then grew as quickly white. He set down his pail, and, turning, found himself face to face with a member of his own class. He bowed politely to him.

“My name is Faxon,” he quietly remarked. “You are Mr. Wentworth, and we are classmates, I believe.”

Philip Wentworth stared coldly at the speaker for a moment, and with an air which plainly indicated that, although they might possibly be in the same class, he regarded himself as composed of very much finer clay than his impecunious brother collegian.

“Oh, ah! really!” he remarked at length. “I simply wanted to tell you that I have some cleaning for you to do.”

“I hope it will be no disappointment to you, Mr. Wentworth, but I can take no more orders at present,” Clifford calmly replied, and, picking up his pail, he moved on, leaving his would-be patron with a disagreeable sense of having been politely sat upon.

“Insolent upstart!” he muttered angrily, and, turning impatiently on his heel, he pursued his way in the opposite direction.

And thus pretty Mollie Heatherford’s would-be lover, who had begged so earnestly for the costly cameo which she had worn on that never-to-be-forgotten day, when she so narrowly escaped a terrible doom, and the hero, to whom she had presented the valuable gem, met for the first time, and as classmates at Harvard.