'Oh, ay. Well, I hope he'll have a better bargain of him than I've had in Edgar. You've heard his impudence?'
'I am exceedingly sorry—'
Then Mr. Underwood broke out with his account of Edgar's folly and ingratitude, after all the care and expense of his education. He had taken up with a set of geniuses for friends, was always rehearsing for amateur performances with them, keeping untimely hours; and coming late to the office, to cast up accounts, or copy invoices in his sleep, make caricatures on his blotting-paper, or still worse, become 'besotted' with some design for a drawing or series of drawings, and in the frenzy of execution know no more what was said to him than a post. Finally, 'the ladies' being as mad as himself, as Mr. Underwood said, had asked him to draw for a bazaar, and in his frenzy of genius over the etchings he had entirely forgotten an important message, and then said he could not help it. On being told that if so he was not fit for his profession, he merely replied, 'Exactly so, the experiment had been unsuccessful;' and when his meekness had brought down a furious tempest of wrath, and threats of dismissal, he had responded, 'with his intolerable cool insolence,' that 'this would be best for all parties.'
'This is the offence?' anxiously asked Felix.
'Offence? What greater offence would you have?'
'Certainly nothing can be much worse as to business,' said Felix. 'But when he told me what had happened, I was afraid that he might be running into temptation.'
'Oh! as to that, there's no harm in the lad—Spooner allows that— nothing low about him.'
'And his friends?'
'How should I know? Raffs those fellows always are, sure to bring him to the dogs!'
'Did you ever hear of an artist named Renville?'