Guy Hammersley; or, Clearing his Name — page 151: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

142 GUY HAMMERSLEY. we have no other redress. ‘The future indeed lacks dark to me.” Guy was greatly distressed by this letter, and never wished for wealth so earnestly as he did at the mo- ment of reading it. What inexpressible joy it would have been to him to be able to write: ‘‘ Bring Harold and come on to New York. I will care for you both.” As it was, he could not even have the satisfaction of inclosing a few dollars with his reply. And yet he was, so to speak, living in luxury himself. Ward’s letters were made up principally of maledic- tions on Colonel Starr, who was ‘‘ cheating them all out of their eyeteeth,” he wrote. ‘‘I’m trying to get Ruth and your mother to join me in a strike,” he added. ‘‘Wenow compose the entire company, you know, and should we fail to appear there could of course be noconcert. But Ruth and Mrs. Hammers- ley insist that as the colonel has always paid them something they cannot plead that he has broken his contract, and that, unless we can prove that he has misappropriated the funds, we can have no case against him. Heis now trying to make an infant phenomenon out of that new young brother of yours. Found out he knew whole pages of ‘Fauntleroy’ by heart. The boy takes very kindly to the notion. I don’t know whether his mother knows about it or not.” Three days later Guy was keeping office during a busy afternoon, when Bertand the two partners were all out showing houses. He had just finished dic- tating a letter to the typewriter when the street door (E@NMIELOOKVOL KS