Meanwhile Mr. Bragg had alighted from the plain brougham which had brought him from his country house; and, walking up the garden path, and in at the open door, presented himself in the little parlour.
"I hope you'll excuse my calling, Mrs. Dobbs. You and me have met years ago."
"No excuse needed, Mr. Bragg. I remember you very well. This is my brother-in-law, Mr. Weatherhead. Please to sit down."
Mr. Bragg sat down; and he and his hostess looked at each other for a moment attentively.
Mr. Bragg was a large, solidly built man, with an impression on his face of perplexity and resolution subtly mingled together. It is a look which may be often seen on the countenance of an intelligent workman, whose employment brings him into conflict with physical phenomena—at once so docile and so intractable; so simply and so eternally mysterious. The expression had long survived the days of Mr. Bragg's personal struggle with facts of a metallic nature. In his present position, as a man of large wealth and influence, he had to deal chiefly with the more complex phenomena of humanity, and very seldom found it so trustworthy in the manipulation as the iron and lead and tin and steel of his younger days.
Mrs. Dobbs marked the changes wrought by time and circumstances in Joshua Bragg. She remembered him—he had even been temporarily in her husband's employment, at one time—in a well-worn suit of working clothes, and with chronically black finger-nails. She saw him now, dressed with quiet good taste (for he left that matter to his London tailor), with irreproachably clean hands—on which, however, toil had left ineffaceable traces—and a massive watch chain worth half a year's earnings of his former days.
"You're very little changed in the main, Mr. Bragg. And the years haven't been hard on you," said Mrs. Dobbs, summing up the result of her observations.
"No; I believe I don't feel the burthen of years much; not bodily, that is. In the mind, I think I do. You see, I've come to a time of life when a man can't keep putting off his own comfort and happiness to the day after to-morrow. Which," added Mr. Bragg thoughtfully, "is exactly where young folks have the pull, I think."
"That's queer, too, Mr. Bragg!" remarked Jo Weatherhead. "Putting off your own comfort and happiness seems a poor way to enjoy yourself, sir."
"Ah, but what you only mean to do, always comes up to your expectations; and what you do do, doesn't!" rejoined Mr. Bragg, with a slow, emphatic nod of the head.