“Ah indeed! Pity! pity! I suppose, then, that a proper sense of what he owes to his family—eh?”
“Without question. Oh! certainly.”
General Belch rose.
“I do not see, then, that we have any thing else that ought to detain you. I will see Mr. Newt, and let you know. Good-morning, Mr. Ele—good-morning, my dear Sir.”
And the General bowed out the representative so imperatively that the Honorable B. Jawley Ele felt very much as if he had been kicked down stairs.
CHAPTER LXI. — GONE TO PROTEST.
There was an unnatural silence and order in the store of Boniface Newt, Son, & Co. The long linen covers were left upon the goods. The cases were closed. The boys sat listlessly and wonderingly about. The porter lay upon a bale reading a newspaper. There was a sombre regularity and repose, like that of a house in which a corpse lies, upon the morning of the funeral.
Boniface Newt sat in his office haggard and gray. His face, like his daughter Fanny’s, had grown sharp, and almost fierce. The blinds were closed, and the room was darkened. His port-folio lay before him upon the desk, open. The paper was smooth and white, and the newly-mended pens lay carefully by the inkstand. But the merchant did not write. He had not written that day. His white, bony hand rested upon the port-folio, and the long fingers drummed upon it at intervals, while his eyes half-vacantly wandered out into the store and saw the long shrouds drawn over the goods. Occasionally a slight sigh of weariness escaped him. But he did not seem to care to distract his mind from its gloomy intentness; for the morning paper lay beside him unopened, although it was afternoon.