He shook his head knowingly.
"Your father's a rich man," he said. "I know. I keep my eyes open. No—I'm going into that business."
I looked at him, trying to imagine him behind a counter, selling laces and ribbons. He was a big, heavy boy, whose clothes were always too small for him, and it seemed to me even then that it would look queer to see such big hands handling delicate things.
"That's why I give so much attention to figures and to French, you see, Poskitt," he said presently. "You can't get on in business unless you're good at figures and book-keeping, and if you can speak French you're at a great advantage over fellows who can't, because you stand a chance of being sent over to Paris to see and buy the latest fashions."
"Give me farming and a good horse and a good dog and gun!" said I.
"Yes," he said, "but you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth. I've got my way to make. I shall make it. I'll be Mayor of Sicaster some day."
The first step towards Abraham's attainment of that wish came when he left the Grammar School and was duly apprenticed to Messrs. Paulsford and Tatham. He was then fourteen, and because of his big frame, heavy countenance, and solemn expression, looked older. I used to see him in the shop sometimes when I went there with my mother or sisters—he assumed a tailed coat at a very early age and put on the true manner with it. His term of apprenticeship, as was usual in those days, was seven years—whether his indentures were cancelled or not I do not know, but he was buyer to the firm at eighteen and manager when he was twenty-one. He became known in Sicaster. His conduct was estimable, and everybody spoke well of him. Six days of the week found him at his post from eight to eight, and on Saturdays till ten; the seventh found him diligent in attendance on the services of the Church, and in teaching in the Sunday-school. He lodged with a highly-respectable widow lady, the relict of a deceased tradesman, and he was never known to pay anything but the most decorous attention to young women.
In this way ten years of Abraham's life passed—to all outward appearance with absolute smoothness. The wiseacres of Sicaster, especially those who congregated in snug bar-parlours and smoked their pipes and drank their grog of a winter's evening, wagged their heads and said that young Kellet must be saving a pretty penny, and that he well knew what he was about. And I believe that few people, either in Sicaster itself, or in the neighbourhood, were at all surprised when it was suddenly announced in the Sicaster Sentinel that the old-established business of Messrs. Paulsford and Tatham had, because of the great age and failing health of the sole remaining partner, Mr. Jonas Tatham, been sold to their manager, Mr. Abraham Kellet, who would in future carry it on in his own name.
So now the old sign came down and a new one went up, and Abraham was no longer the watchful, ubiquitous manager, but the lynx-eyed omnipresent master. The look of power came into his eyes and manner; he trod the streets and crossed the market-place with the tread of a man who had a stake in the town. Men who knew him as an apprentice boy were quick to "sir" him; some, to cap him; he had shown that he could make money. Everybody knew now that he was going to write his name in large letters on the rolls of Sicaster, whereon there were already a good many names that were not of inconsiderable note.
And then, just as Abraham seemed to have settled down to the opening stages of a brilliant commercial career of his own building, a great calamity happened. It happened just when it might have been least expected to happen—for all things seemed auspicious for Abraham's greatness. He had bought a handsome house and was furnishing it handsomely. He had just become engaged to the daughter and only child of Alderman John Chepstow, who was a heiress in her own right and might be expected to inherit her father's considerable fortune in due time. Fortune seemed to be smiling upon him in her widest and friendliest fashion. Suddenly she frowned.