“Tut! tut! the favor is entirely on the other side. Had some outsider brought me the orders which that boy has taken, I would have had to pay twenty times as much in commissions as Phil’s salary has amounted to. What do you think of ‘Edgar Tramlay & Co.’ for a business sign, or even ‘Tramlay & Hayn’?”
“I suppose it will have to be,” said the lady, without any indication of gratification, “and, if it must be, the sooner the better, for it can’t help making Lucia’s position more certain. If it doesn’t do so at once, I shall believe it my duty to speak to the young man.”
“Don’t! don’t, I implore!” exclaimed the merchant. “He will think——”
“What he may think is of no consequence,” said Mrs. Tramlay. “It is time that he should know what city etiquette demands.”
“But it isn’t necessary, is it, that he should know how matter-of-fact and cold-hearted we city people can be about matters which country-people think should be approached with the utmost heart and delicacy? Don’t let him know what a mercenary, self-serving lot of wretches we are, until he is so fixed that he can’t run away.”
“Edgar, the subject is not one to be joked about, I assure you.”
“And I assure you, my dear, that I’m not more than half joking,—not a bit more.”
“I shall not say more than thousands of the most loving and discreet mothers have been obliged to say in similar circumstances,” said Mrs. Tramlay. “If you cannot trust me to discharge this duty delicately, perhaps you will have the kindness to undertake it yourself.”
“The very thing!” said Tramlay. “If he must have unpleasant recollections of one of us, I would rather it wouldn’t be his mother-in-law. The weight of precedent is against you, don’t you know?—though not through any fault of yours.”
“Will you seriously promise to speak to him? At once?—this very week?”