“Have you been in the store?” asked the old gentleman.
“No, Sir, I’ve been at school.”
“What! to school till now? Why, you must be twenty years old!” exclaimed Mr. Van Boozenberg, in great surprise.
“Yes, Sir, in my twentieth year.”
“Why, Mr. Newt,” said Mr. Van B., with the air of a man who is in entire perplexity, “what on earth has your boy been doing at school until now?”
“It was his grandfather’s will, Sir,” replied Boniface Newt.
“Well, well, a great pity! a werry great pity! Ma wanted one of our boys to go to college. Ma, sez I, what on earth should Corlaer go to college for? To get learnin’, pa, sez ma. To get learnin’! sez I. I’ll get him learnin’, sez I, down to the store, Werry well, sez ma. Werry well, sez I, and so ‘twas; and I think I done a good thing by him.”
Mr. Van Boozenberg talked at much greater length of his general intercourse with ma. Mr. Boniface Newt regarded him more and more contemptuously.
But the familiar style of the old gentleman’s conversation begot a corresponding familiarity upon the part of Mr. Newt. Mr. Van Boozenberg learned incidentally that Abel had never been in business before. He observed the fresh odor of cigars in the counting-room—he remarked the extreme elegance of Abel’s attire, and the inferential tailor’s bills. He learned that Mrs. Newt and the family were enjoying themselves at Saratoga. He derived from the conversation and his observation that there were very large family expenses to be met by Boniface Newt.
Meanwhile that gentleman had continually no other idea of his visitor than that he was insufferable. He had confessed to Abel that the old man was shrewd. His shrewdness was a proverb. But he is a dull, ignorant, ungrammatical, and ridiculous old ass for all that, thought Boniface Newt; and the said ass sitting in Boniface Newt’s counting-room, and amusing and fatiguing Messrs. Newt & Son with his sez I’s, and sez shes, and his mas, and his done its, was quietly making up his mind that the house of Newt & Son had received no accession of capital or strength by the entrance of the elegant Abel into a share of its active management, and that some slight whispers which he had heard remotely affecting the standing of the house must be remembered.