Silas Bradford's Boy by Joseph C. Lincoln

That forenoon was a very long one for Banks Bradford. It should not have been, for the new attorney of the Ostable National Bank had work enough to do, goodness knows. The trouble was that he found it hard to concentrate upon that work, important as it was.

The only subjects upon which his mind seemed perversely determined to concentrate had nothing whatever to do with banks or shareholders or mergers. There were letters to be written and answers to letters to be read and considered, and he would set his teeth and square his shoulders over them and then, a few minutes later, his pen would stop moving and his thoughts go drifting away in another daydream--drifting always in one direction, that of a certain house on the Old Ostable Road.