"They are not crowded so much, I suppose," said Miss Mackenzie.
"It isn't only that. The truth is, that in London nobody cares what his house looks like. The whole thing is so ugly that anything not ugly would be out of place. Now, in Paris—you have been in Paris, Miss Mackenzie?"
In answer to this, Miss Mackenzie was compelled to own that she had never been in Paris.
"Ah, you should go to Paris, Miss Mackenzie; you should, indeed. Now, you're a lady that have nothing to prevent your going anywhere. If I were you, I'd go almost everywhere; but above all, I'd go to Paris. There's no place like Paris."
"I suppose not," said Miss Mackenzie.
By this time Mr Rubb had returned from the window, and had seated himself in the easy chair in the middle of the room. In doing so he thrust out both his legs, folded his hands one over the other, and looked very comfortable.
"Now I'm a slave to business," he said. "That horrid place in the New Road, which we want to buy with your money, has made a prisoner of me for the last twenty years. I went into it as the boy who was to do the copying, when your brother first became a partner. Oh dear, how I did hate it!"
"Did you now?"
"I should rather think I did. I had been brought up at the Merchant Taylors' and they intended to send me to Oxford. That was five years before they began the business in the New Road. Then came the crash which our house had at Manchester; and when we had picked up the pieces, we found that we had to give up university ideas. However, I'll make a business of it before I'm done; you see if I don't, Miss Mackenzie. Your brother has been with us so many years that I have quite a pleasure in talking to you about it."
Miss Mackenzie was not quite sure that she reciprocated the pleasure; for, after all, though he did look so much better than she had expected, he was only Rubb, junior, from Rubb and Mackenzie's; and any permanent acquaintance with Mr Rubb would not suit the line of life in which she was desirous of moving. But she did not in the least know how to stop him, or how to show him that she had intended to receive him simply as a man of business. And then it was so seldom that anyone came to talk to her, that she was tempted to fall away from her high resolves. "I have not known much of my brother's concerns," she said, attempting to be cautious.