He lurched over to the piano, sat carelessly, sidewise, on its stool, and, thrumming at the keyboard, fell to humming in a slurring, reminiscent fashion, the old Leyden University chorus:
"Ach, daar koonet ye amuseeren! Io vivat—Io vivat
Nostorum sanitas, hoc estamoris porculum,
Dolores est anti gotum—Io vivat—Io vivat
Nostorum sanitas—!
"Say, Hartmann," he broke off from his jumble of Dutch and Hollandised Latin, "the old man is aging. He's aging fast."
"Who?" asked Hartmann absently, glancing up from his work. "Oh, your uncle? Yes, he is mellowing. He is changing foliage with the years."
"Changing foliage? Not he. He changes nothing. What was good enough forty years ago seems to him quite good enough to-day. He's as old-fashioned as his hats. And they're the oldest things since Noah's time. He's just as old-fashioned in his financial ways. In my opinion, for instance, this would be a capital time to sell out the business. But he——"
"Sell out?" echoed Hartmann in genuine horror. "Sell out a business that's been in his family for—why, man, he'd as soon sell his soul. This business is his religion."
"Yes, and that's why it is so flourishing in spite of his back-date customs. It's at the very acme of its prosperity now. Why, the plant must be worth an easy half million. Yes, and more. Lord, but it would sell now! One, two, three,—Augenblick! By the way, speaking of selling,—what was the last offer the dear old gentleman turned down from Hicks of Rochester?"
But Hartmann did not hear the question. He was staring at Frederik in open-mouthed astonishment.
"Sell out?" he repeated dully. "This is a new one—even from you. There isn't a day your uncle doesn't tell me how triumphantly you are going to carry on the business after he is gone. He——"
"Oh, I am!" sneered Frederik. "I am. Of course I am. How can you doubt it. Wait and see. It's a big name—'Peter Grimm.' And the old gentleman knows his business. He assuredly knows his business."