Mr. Stephens laughed.
"He ought to have been a lawyer instead of a merchant. Don't you think so, Ryan?" he asked, glancing admiringly at the flushed young face.
"I told him so several years ago," said Mr. Ryan.
Theodore was roused and excited; he could not let the subject drop.
"I can conceive of another reason why a good man should not harbor such serpents in disguise," he said, in the pleasant, half-playful tone which the conversation had latterly assumed.
"Let us have it by all means," answered Mr. Stephens. "I am court-martialed, I perceive and may as well have all the shots at once."
"Why, sir, what possible right can you have to beguile an innocent youth like myself to your table, and tempt his unsuspecting ignorance with a quivering bit of jelly which, had he known its ingredients, such are his principles and his resolves, and I may add such is his horror of the fiend, that he would almost rather have had his tongue plucked out by the roots than to have touched it?"
The sentence, began playfully, was finished in terrible earnestness, with trembling voice and quivering lip. There was no concealing the fact that this subject in all its details was a solemn one to him. Mr. Stephens watched for a moment the flushed earnest face. This man without wife or children, without home other than his wealth and his housekeeper furnished him, was fast taking his confidential clerk into his inner heart. He looked at him a moment, then glanced down at the table. Mr. Ryan's dish of jelly and his own still remained untouched. He spoke impulsively:
"Ryan, are you partial to that ill-fated dish beside you?"
"Not at all," answered that gentleman, laughingly. "I have conceived quite a horror for the quivering, suspicious-looking lump."