“I wondered to see him so ill-dressed,” observed Mr. Bernard.
“I told him yesterday,” said Mr. Wallace, “that I expected to see him decently clothed, knowing, as I did, that he earned a great deal of money, and laid it all by in the Monmouth Savings Bank, except what is barely sufficient to procure him shelter and daily food.”
“Has he neither wife nor family to support?”
“He seems not to have a relation or acquaintance in the world. He speaks to nobody but the overlooker and myself.”
“And what sort of intercourse have you with him?”
“I converse with him as often as we can both spare time, and always with pleasure; for he is well, I might say highly, educated, and has the speech and manners of a gentleman.”
“How strange! And do not you know where he comes from, and what brought him?”
“I know nothing of him but that he is a genius and a miser—two characters which are rarely seen united. Paul keeps his own counsel so perfectly as to who he is and whence he comes, that my curiosity is very strongly excited, and I would take some pains to get at the bottom of the mystery, if I did not feel that every man has a right to his own secret. He is an industrious and faithful servant to me, and that is all I have any business with.”
Mrs. Sydney ventured so far as to put a question to Paul; but he was just going to tap the furnace, i. e. to let out the fused iron,—a very important operation,—and was therefore too busy to answer her.
“I will bring you together after working-hours some day,” whispered Mr. Wallace to her. “If we should meet him taking his ramble on a Sunday, or when, as now and then happens, we put somebody in his place to relieve him for a day, he will be more disposed for conversation than now. He is sociable enough when he falls in with any one whom he thinks worthy of being talked to.”