"Mr. Wetherley, this is my brother, Mr. Abel Newt."

The young men bowed.

"Oh, indeed!" said Zephyr. "How'd he come here listening?"

"Chance, chance, Mr. Wetherley. I have just returned from school. Pretty tough old school-boy, hey? Well, it's all the grandpa's doing. Grandpas are extraordinary beings, Mr. Wetherley. Now there was--"

"Oh, indeed! Really, I must go. Good-morning, Miss Newt. Good-morning, Sir." And Mr. Zephyr Wetherley departed.

The brother and sister laughed.

"Sensible fellow," said Abel; "he flies the grandpas."

"How did you come here, you wretch!" asked Fanny, "listening to my secrets?"

"My dear, I arrived this morning, only half an hour ago. I let myself in by my pass-key, and, hearing voices in the parlor, I went round by the conservatory to spy out the land. Then and there I beheld this spectacle.

Fanny, you're wonderful."

Miss Newt made a demure courtesy.

"So you've really come home for good? Well, Abel, I'm glad. Now you're here I shall have a man of my own to attend me next winter. And there's to be the handsome Boston bride here, you know, next season."

"Who is she?" said Abel, laughing, sinking into a chair. "Mother wrote me you said that all Boston girls are dowdy. Who is the dowdy of next winter?"

"Mrs. Alfred Dinks," replied Fanny, carelessly, but looking with her keenest glance at Abel.

He, sprang up and began to say something; but his sister's eye arrested him.

"Oh yes," said he, hurriedly--"Dinks, I've heard about Alfred Dinks.

What a devil of a name!"

"Come, dear, you'd better go up stairs and see mamma," said Fanny; "and I'm so sorry you missed Aunt Dagon. She was here this morning, lovely as ever. But I think the velvet is wearing off her claws."

Fanny Newt laughed a cold little laugh. Abel went out of the room.

"Master Abel, then, does know Miss Hope Wayne," said she to herself. "He more than knows her--he loves her--or thinks he does. Wouldn't he have known if she had been engaged to her cousin?"

She pondered a little while.

"I don't believe," thought Miss Fanny, "that she is engaged to him."

Miss Fanny was pleased with that thought, because she meant to be engaged to him herself, if it proved to be true, as every body declared, that he had ten or fifteen thousand a year.

CHAPTER XIV.

A NEW YORK MERCHANT.

Mr. Lawrence Newt, the brother of Boniface, sat in his office. It was upon South Street, and the windows looked out upon the shipping in the East River--upon the ferry-boats incessantly crossing--upon the lofty city of Brooklyn opposite, with its spires. He heard the sailors sing--the oaths of the stevedores--the bustle of the carts, and the hum and scuffle of the passers-by. As he sat at his table he saw the ships haul into the stream--the little steamers that puffed alongside bringing the passengers; then, if the wind were not fair, pulling and shoving the huge hulks into a space large enough for them to manage themselves in.

Sometimes he watched the parting of passengers at the wharf when the wind was fair, and the ship could sail from her berth. The vast sails were slowly unfurled, were shaken out, hung for a few moments, then shook lazily, then filled round and full with the gentle, steady wind. Mr.

Lawrence Newt laughed as he watched, for he thought of fine ladies taking their hair out of curl-papers, and patting and smoothing and rolling it upon little sticks and over little fingers until the curls stood round and full, and ready for action.

Then the ship moved slowly, almost imperceptibly, from the wharf--so slowly, so imperceptibly, that the people on board thought the city was sliding away from them. The merchant saw the solid, trim, beautiful vessel turn her bow southward and outward, and glide gently down the river. Her hull was soon lost to his eyes, but he could see the streamer fluttering at the mast-head over the masts of the other vessels. While he looked it vanished--the ship was gone.

Often enough Mr. Lawrence Newt stood leaning his head against the window-frame of his office after the ship had disappeared, and seemed to be looking at the ferry-boats or at the lofty city of Brooklyn. But he saw neither. Faster than ship ever sailed, or wind blew, or light flashed, the thought of Lawrence Newt darted, and the merchant, seemingly leaning against his office-window in South Street, was really sitting under palm-trees, or dandling in a palanquin, or chatting in a strange tongue, or gazing in awe upon snowier summits than the villagers of Chamouni have ever seen.

And what was that dark little hand he seemed to himself to press?--and what were those eyes, soft depths of exquisite darkness, into which through his own eyes his soul seemed to be sinking?

There were clerks busily writing in the outer office. It was dark in that office when Mr. Newt first occupied the rooms, and Thomas Tray, the book-keeper, who had the lightest place, said that the eyes of Venables, the youngest clerk, were giving out. Young Venables, a lad of sixteen, supported a mother and sister and infirm father upon his five hundred dollars a year.

"Eyes giving out in my service, Thomas Tray! I am ashamed of myself."

And Lawrence Newt hired the adjoining office, knocked down all the walls, and introduced so much daylight that it shone not only into the eyes of young Venables, but into those of his mother and sister and infirm father.

It was scratch, scratch, scratch, all day long in the clerks' office.

Messengers were coming and going. Samples were brought in. Draymen came for orders. Apple-women and pie-men dropped in about noon, and there were plenty of cheap apples and cheap jokes when the peddlers were young and pretty. Customers came and brother merchants, who went into Mr.

Lawrence Newt's room. They talked China news, and South American news, and Mediterranean news. Their conversation was full of the names of places of which poems and histories have been written. The merchants joked complacent jokes. They gossiped a little when business had been discussed. So young Whitloe was really to marry Magot's daughter, and the Doolittle money would go to the Magots after all! And old Jacob Van Boozenberg had actually left off knee-breeches and white cravats, and none of his directors knew him when he came into the Bank in modern costume. And there was no doubt that Mrs. Dagon wore cotton lace at the Orrys', for Winslow's wife said she saw it with her own eyes.

Mr. Lawrence Newt's talk ceased with that about business. When the scandal set in, his mind seemed to set out. He stirred the fire if it were winter. He stepped into the outer office. He had a word for Venables. Had Miss Venables seen the new novel by Mr. Bulwer? It is called "Pelham," and will be amusing to read aloud in the family. Will Mr. Venables call at Carville's on his way up, have the book charged to Mr. Lawrence Newt, and present it, with Mr. Newt's compliments, to his sister? If it were summer he opened the window, when it happened to be closed, and stood by it, or drew his chair to it and looked at the ships and the streets, and listened to the sailors swearing when he might have heard merchants, worth two or three hundred thousand dollars apiece, talking about Mrs. Dagon's cotton lace.

One day he sat at his table writing letters. He was alone in the inner room; but the sun that morning did not see a row of pleasanter faces than were bending over large books in odoriferous red Russia binding, and little books in leather covers, and invoices and sheets of letter paper, in the outer office of Lawrence Newt.

A lad entered the office and stood at the door, impressed by the silent activity he beheld. He did not speak; the younger clerks looked up a moment, then went on with their work. It was clearly packet-day.

The lad remained silent for so long a time, as if his profound respect for the industry he saw before him would not allow him to speak, that Thomas Tray looked up at last, and said,

"Well, Sir?"

"May I see Mr. Newt, Sir?"

"In the other room," said Mr. Tray, with his goose-quill in his mouth, nodding his head toward the inner office, and turning over with both hands a solid mass of leaves in his great, odoriferous red Russia book, and letting them gently down--proud of being the author of that clearly-written, massive work, containing an accurate biography of Lawrence Newt's business.

The youth tapped at the glass door. Mr. Newt said, "Come in," and, when the door opened, looked up, and still holding his pen with the ink in it poised above the paper, he said, kindly, "Well, Sir? Be short. It's packet-day."

"I want a place, Sir."

"What kind of a place?"

"In a store, Sir."

"I'm sorry I'm all full. But sit down while I finish these letters; then we'll talk about it."