“A werry pretty store you have here, Mr. Newt. Find Pearl Street as good as Beaver?”
“Oh yes, Sir,” replied Boniface Newt, bowing and rubbing his hands. “Call again, Sir; it’s a rare pleasure to see you here, Mr. Van Boozenberg.”
“Well, you know, ma, sez she, now pa you mustn’t sit in draughts. It’s so sort of draughty down town in your horrid offices, pa, sez she—sez ma, you know—that I’m awful ‘fraid you’ll catch your death, sez she, and I must mind ma, you know. Good-mornin’, Mr. Newt, a werry good-mornin’, Sir,” said the old gentleman, as he stepped out.
“Do you have much of that sort of thing to undergo in business, father?” asked Abel, when Jacob Van Boozenberg had gone.
“My dear son,” replied the older Mr. Newt, “the world is made up of fools, bores, and knaves. Some of them speak good grammar and use white cambric pocket-handkerchiefs, some do not. It’s dreadful, I know, and I am rather tired of a world where you are busy driving donkeys with a chance of their presently driving you.”
Mr. Boniface Newt shook his foot pettishly.
“Father,” said Abel.
“Well.”
“Which is Uncle Lawrence—a fool, a bore, or a knave?”
Mr. Boniface Newt’s foot stopped, and, after looking at his son for a few moments, he answered: