"Do you know much of the City?" Katharine said, after a slight pause in their conversation; "do you often go there?"
"No, indeed," said Frere; "I seldom have occasion; and my rambles eastwards rarely extend beyond the Temple. But why do you ask? Do you take an interest in the City?"
"I do," she returned thoughtfully; "I should like to explore it thoroughly for the sake of its present and its past. I have never seen any thing of it since I was a child, and they took me to the Tower, and Guildhall, and the Thames Tunnel all on the same day; and I remember nothing but a hideous figure of Queen Elizabeth, the block--which frightened me--Gog and Magog, and my own fatigue. I was horribly tired when I came home; and when, on another holiday, they wanted to take me to St. Paul's, and told me about the winding stairs and the whispering gallery, I positively declined the proposed diversion. So I have never really seen the City. I drove through a part of it yesterday, and a very dingy part it was too; and I thought how much I should like to see it all and think over it all."
"I don't suppose many people think of it in that way," said Mr. Frere; "to the world at large it's only a huge counting-house, a busy beehive, a crowd of places where money is to be made, and of men intent on making it."
"But even in that aspect it is very interesting," said Katharine; "and in that aspect I was considering it when I looked at the great warehouses and offices, and saw the names whose very sound is golden, the names famous all over the world. But, after all, these people must lead horribly stupid lives, for ever toiling at money-getting. I don't suppose they have time to enjoy spending it when it is made. Only fancy how dreadful to have to go to these dingy places every day, and stay there all day long."
"That is true," said Gordon Frere. "The lives of City men do not seem very enviable, or indeed bearable to us; but there must be a compensation in them. Some of them must absolutely like plodding, for they go on with it long after they need not, as a matter of choice."
"Do they?" asked Katharine in a tone of surprise. "I saw a 'City man' when I was there,--I had a little business to attend to for papa, as he was not at home,--and he had such a settled, business-like look, though he was not at all old. I could not fancy him ever taking any pleasure or amusement, or being like other people--of course, I mean," she added explanatorily, "any of the pleasures of his class."
"O, I suppose not," said Frere; "a regular grub, who will be what he will be content to call rich when he's gray and gouty. But they have one consolation, Miss Guyon: as their business and their pleasure alike consist in money-getting, the one is not purchased at the expense of the other."
"Like ours," she said with a laugh, "when we have any business." Then she went on again, thoughtfully as before: "I should like to go all through the City. Not for the sake of seeing the places where all the money that I have nothing to do with is made; but because so much of our old history was acted out there. I suppose in the City one can get a sight of the old landmarks; and they are certainly not to be found outside it. It is rather odd that every thing that is most dignified connects itself in one's mind with City places, and every thing that is most vulgar with City people. If one could only see it after all the money-grubbers are gone away, and when it is still and quiet in the evenings, as they say it is----"
"And when, accordingly, the most ingenious and charmingly-sensational robberies are perpetrated," said Gordon Frere, laughing. "Well, that is a wish easily gratified. Who was the man who always said, when any place was mentioned, 'Let's make a party and go'? No matter, we will echo him. I know a man who knows lots of City men, who would be delighted to show you every thing worth seeing; and then there are books, you know, which tell one the history--I was going to say the pedigree--of every place. But I suppose Mr. Guyon has City acquaintances also?"