Old Christopher nodded.
"Yes, yes; Charles is like that. He thinks in a large way. I've fancied sometimes that the eyes of his mind are so fashioned that they cannot see anything under a given size. But," coming back to the subject with a sudden brightening of manner, "what of yourself? What have you been doing? Tell me everything about it. I'm sure it's of interest, for you were always full of that." The old man laughed, and the sound had a clear ring, surprisingly like that of a boy. "It once would have taken a dozen to keep track of you."
Anthony told him the story of his transplanting; of the ship that had taken them, and all their household effects, down the Delaware, and up the Mississippi; of New Orleans and the pirate Spaniards who held its customs and dwarfed the port; of the quaint old streets; of the mingling of races; the color and strangeness of life there; of the mission-school, where the good padres had taken him in hand much to his advantage; of his father's losses in business, caused by the tricky methods of the port authorities, and then of his death. His mother had lived a year longer; then she, too, had died.
"The money, then," said Christopher, "is gone."
"All of my father's—yes," replied Anthony, "They stripped him to the bones. But there is still the interest in Rufus Stevens' Sons, left me by my grandfather; that had never been disturbed. The income from it made my mother comfortable while she lived."
"And when she had gone,—fine, proud, beautiful creature,—what then?"
"I sailed as mate in a Spanish ship, trading with South America and ports on the West Coast; for a year or two I was in the counting-house of Montufars, a trader at New Orleans. Three times I crossed the mountains and desert with fur-buying trains, to California; and, on the same errand, I've navigated the Mississippi and tributaries to places, so they've told me, where white men had not been seen."
"You would do that," said the apothecary, nodding his glittering head, "As a boy you always loved to venture where no one had been before you." He looked at the young man with his manner of mild attention. "And now you've come back to where you were born," he said. "To stay, I hope; to take your place in the business of your grandfather."
Anthony shook his head doubtingly.
"I don't know as to that," he replied. "It's true I have no ties in New Orleans; and I will do as well in one place as another. But my uncle is a man of sharp-cut achievements, and it may be that he'll be content enough if I keep my distance." And, though Anthony laughed at this, his chin went out in a way it had. "If he's of that frame of mind I'll be willing to do so; for I have affairs enough of my own to keep me busy, and a little effort will add to them from time to time."