If he hesitated, be assured himself, very confidently too, that it was not from the name or nature of the commercial operation. He had no objection to trade in rags any more than in hides or tallow or oakum, and some gum which did not “breathe of Araby the blest.” He was sure that it could not possibly affect his choice, and that rags were just as legitimate and just as elevating a speculation as sherry from Cadiz or silk from China. He was ingenious enough in his self-discussions; but somehow, though he thought he could tell his mother frankly and honestly the new trade he was about to embark in, for the life of him he could not summon courage to make the communication to Alice. He fancied her, as she read the avowal, repeating the word “rags,” and, while her lips trembled with the coming laughter, saying, “What in the name of all absurdity led him to such a choice?” And what a number of vapid and tasteless jokes would it provoke! “Such snobbery as it all is,” cried he, as he walked the room angrily; “as if there was any poetry in cotton bales, or anything romantic in molasses, and yet I might engage in these without reproach, without ridicule. I think I ought to be above such considerations. I do think my good blood might serve to assure me that in whatever I do honorably, honestly, and avowedly there is no derogation.”
But the snobbery was stronger than he wotted of; for, do what he would, he could not frame the sentence in which he should write the tidings to Alice, and yet he felt that there would be a degree of meanness in the non-avowal infinitely more intolerable.
While he thus chafed and fretted, he heard a quick step mounting the stair, and at the same instant his door was flung open, and Skeffy Darner rushed towards him and grasped both his hands.
“Well, old Tony, you scarcely expected to see me here, nor did I either thirty hours ago, but they telegraphed for me to come at once. I 'm off for Naples.”
“And why to Naples?”
“I 'll tell you, Tony,” said he, confidentially; “but remember this is for yourself alone. These things mustn't get abroad; they are Cabinet secrets, and not known out of the Privy Council.”
“You may trust me,” said Tony; and Skeffy went on.
“I 'm to be attached there,” said be, solemnly.
“What do you mean by attached?”
“I'm going there officially. They want me at our Legation. Sir George Home is on leave, and Mecklam is Chargé d'Affaires; of course every one knows what that means.”