Suddenly it occurred to him that he was not far from Tramlay’s office: he might make a call, if only to show that he could, with proper facilities, look unlike a countryman. Besides, he wanted to know all about the iron business, about which he had seen so many contradictory assertions in the newspapers.
He entered the store and walked back toward the railed counting-room in which he saw the head of Haynton’s recent summer boarder. A clerk asked him his business; he replied that he had merely dropped in to see Mr. Tramlay. The head of the establishment looked at Phil without recognition when this information was imparted, and advanced with a somewhat impatient air, which suddenly changed to cordiality as he exclaimed,—
“Why, my dear fellow! excuse me. I didn’t recognize you at first: we can’t all of us have young eyes, you know. Come in; sit down; make yourself at home. I’m glad you dropped in: I’m going out to lunch pretty soon, and I do hate to lunch alone.”
Phil soon found himself coaxed and assisted to a high office-stool at a desk by the window, and all the morning papers placed before him, while Tramlay said,—
“Look at the paper two or three minutes while I straighten out a muddle in a customer’s letter; then we’ll go out.”
Phil took up a paper; the advertising page—which happened to be the first—was very interesting, nevertheless Phil’s eyes wandered, for his mind was just then curious about the iron trade. He looked around him for indications of the business; but the only bit of iron in sight was a paper-weight on the desk before him. Closer scrutiny was rewarded by the discovery of a bit of angle-iron, a few inches long, lying on a window-sill. In the mean time the proprietor had scribbled a few lines, assorted some papers, and closed his desk by drawing down the top. Then he said,—
“Now let’s go in search of peace and comfort.”
“I shouldn’t think you’d have to leave your office for that,” said Phil, who had found the counting-room greatly unlike what he had expected.
“There’s no peace where business is going on,” Tramlay replied; “although I don’t know, after careful thought, of any noisier place than a New York restaurant. Here we are. Come in.”
Phil found himself in one of the very large and noisy places where New York business-men herd about noonday. Phil protested, in the usual rural manner, that he was not at all hungry, but Tramlay ordered so skilfully that both were duly occupied for an hour. Phil found his host attentive, yet occasionally absent-minded. He might have spared himself the trouble of making a mental memorandum to study out the why and wherefore of this apparently incongruous pair of qualities had he known that Tramlay was cudgelling his brain to know how to dispose of his rural visitor after dinner, without offending. While they were sipping the coffee,—a beverage which Phil had never before tasted in the middle of the day,—Mr. Marge lounged up to them, looking exactly as intelligent, listless, and unchangeable as the night before.