"You seem to have had a number of accountants of late years," said he.
Charles smiled, rather ruefully.
"Yes," said he, "that's true. I don't understand how it is. Our other work-people stay on with us for years. But, among those who have kept our accounts, Tom Horn seems to be the only one who could or would remain."
Anthony's eyes went hungrily up and down the careful columns.
"I think," said he, "I'd rather dip into these than into any other books you have." And then, as his uncle looked at him in surprise, he added, "If I'm to come to the core of the firm's doings, I see no more direct way than this."
"Well, after all," said Charles amusedly, "I was not far wrong. You are your grandfather over again. He'd have preferred the counting-house books to any romance or comedy ever penned."
And so when Anthony set out for his lodgings that night, he carried with him a number of the firm's books; they ran in regular order, and the dates on their backs were of the years immediately following his father's withdrawal from the business.
XVI
Anthony found a fine flavor in the old books of Rufus Stevens' Sons, a rich color, and an admirable reticence. Everything was set down with clerkly care, but for all that there was no humdrum routine, no dull insistence on profit and loss, no sordid grasping or squeezing of little things. The columns of figures, as Anthony studied them, did not mean so much the dollars paid out or taken in; they did not seem to deal with hard money, or price, with bargain or sale; when a line was struck under one of them, the result had none of the smell of the counting-room; rather it told of singular adventuring, of hazards, of stratagems in the midst of danger, of bleak days and plunging nights at sea.