The Signature of All Things

not a minister, in that case?”
    “My mother wonders the same thing, Mr. Whittaker. I am afraid I have too many questions about religion to be a good minister.”
    “ Religion? ” Henry frowned. “What the deuce does religion have to do with being a good minister? It is a profession like any other profession, young man. You fit yourself to the task, and keep your opinions private. That is what all good ministers do—or should!”
    Mr. Pike laughed pleasantly. “If only somebody had told me that twenty years ago, sir!”
    “There is no excuse for a young man of health and wit in this country not to prosper. Even a minister’s son should be able to find industrious activity somewhere.”
    “Many would agree with you,” said Mr. Pike. “Including my late father. Nonetheless, I have been living beneath my station for years.”
    “And I have been living above my station—forever! I first came here to America when I was a young fellow about your age. I found money lying about everywhere, all over this country. All I had to do was pick it up with the tip of my walking stick. What is your excuse for poverty, then?”
    Mr. Pike looked Henry directly in the eye and said, without a trace of malice, “The want of a good walking stick, I suppose.”
    Alma swallowed hard and stared down at her plate. George Hawkes did the same. Henry, however, seemed not to hear. There were times when Alma thanked the heavens for her father’s worsening deafness. He had already turned his attention to the butler.
    “I tell you, Becker,” Henry said, “if you make me eat mutton one more night this week, I will have someone shot.”
    “He doesn’t really have people shot,” Alma reassured Mr. Pike, under her breath.
    “I had figured that,” her guest whispered back, “or else I would be dead already.”
    For the rest of the meal, George and Alma and Mr. Pike made pleasant conversation—more or less between themselves—while Henry huffed and coughed and complained about various aspects of his dinner, and even nodded off a few times, chin collapsed on his chest. He was, after all, eighty-eightyears old. None of it, happily, appeared to concern Mr. Pike, and as George Hawkes was already used to this sort of behavior, Alma eventually relaxed a bit.
    “Please forgive my father,” Alma said to Mr. Pike in a low voice, during one of Henry’s bouts of sleep. “George knows his moods well, but these outbursts can be disquieting to those who do not have experience with our Henry Whittaker.”
    “He is quite the bear at the dinner table,” Mr. Pike replied, with a tone more admiring than appalled.
    “Indeed he is,” said Alma. “Thankfully, though, like a bear, he sometimes gives us the respite of hibernating!”
    This comment even brought a smile to George Hawkes’s lips, but Ambrose was still studying the sleeping figure of Henry, pondering something.
    “My own father was so grave, you see,” he said. “I always found his silences frightening. I should think it would be delightful to have a father who speaks and acts with such liberty. One always knows where one stands.”
    “One does, at that,” Alma agreed.
    “Mr. Pike,” George said, changing the subject, “may I ask where you are living at the moment? The address to which I sent my letter was in Boston, but you mentioned just now that your family resides in Framingham, so I wasn’t certain.”
    “At the moment, sir, I am without a home,” said Mr. Pike. “The address you refer to in Boston is the residence of my old friend Daniel Tupper, who has been kind to me since the days of my short career at Harvard. His family owns a small printing concern in Boston—nothing as fine as your operation, but well run and solid. They are mostly known for pamphlets and local bills of advertisement, that sort of thing. When I left Harvard, I worked for the Tupper family for several years as a typesetter, and found that I had a hand for it. That was also where I first learned the art of lithography. I had been told it was difficult, but I never found it to be. It is much the same as drawing, really, except that one draws on stone—though of course you both already know that! Forgive me. I am unaccustomed to speaking about my work.”
    “And what took you to Mexico and Guatemala, Mr. Pike?” George continued gently.
    “Again, we can credit my friend Tupper with that. I’ve always had a fascination for orchids, and somewhere along the way, Tupper hatched a scheme that