XV
Winter crept in. The water in the docks froze; later, great white blocks were drifting in the river. Then, one bitter night, the stream was sealed, and shipping was over until the spring, or some unlooked-for stretch of mild weather.
Anthony had changed his quarters to a neat old house in Sassafras Street, where he had a bedroom facing the west, and a small snuggery with a window overlooking the south. Each morning, while the bells in the towers were ringing seven, his boots were crunching through the frozen snow on the way to Rufus Stevens' Sons. Always, by half-past seven on the word of the clock on the counting-house wall, he'd reached there, hung his great blue coat in a closet, and whipped into the work at hand.
There never was such a counting-house for order as Rufus Stevens' Sons. Anthony found that out when he'd only been there a few days. Its ledgers were models; its clerks had the vanity of perfection; its windows shone like crystal, the floor planks were white with scrubbing, and its brass work snapped with the light from fireplaces whose hearths were ever swept clean of smut.
The deep, cave-like warehouses were equally well kept; the goods in cases, barrels, and bales were ranked in massive and severe array; the carts and drays were smart with paint, their horses strong and well conditioned.
Anthony's place in the counting-house was somewhat unsettled; the business was so methodical, so well arranged that a new hand, no matter what it touched, or how lightly, seemed superfluous. And this very fact he was quick to seize upon, and turn to his purpose.
"I don't think I'll have any real use here," he told his uncle, "until I can digest the history of the house; I'll have, especially, to arrange in my mind all its doings of a decade past. I want to grow up with it, in a sense."
Charles smiled at this. Weir's stone-like eyes were fixed on the young man's face in an oddly watchful way.
"That has a very thorough sound," Charles said. "But," with a shake of the head, "it implies a deal of labor."