IV
As they went northward on Front Street, with the broad Delaware to the right, for as yet no Water Street narrowed the river frontage, the German said: "I left out of my portrait gallery one Schmidt, but you will come to know him in time. He has a talent for intimacy. Come, now; you have known him five years. What do you think of him?"
More and more strange seemed this gentleman to his young companion. He glanced aside at the tall, strongly built man, with the merry blue eyes, and, a little embarrassed and somewhat amused, replied with habitual caution, "I hardly know as yet, but I think I shall like him."
"I like the answer. You will like him, but we may leave him and time to beget opinion. How dignified these Georgian fronts are, and the stoops! Once folks sat on them at evening, and gossiped of the miseries of war. Now there are changed ways and more luxury and a new day—less simpleness; but not among the good people we have left. No. They are of the best, and aristocrats, too, though you may not suspect it. The habit of hospitality in a new land remains. A lady with small means loses no social place because, like our hostess, she receives guests who pay. Here will come rich kinsfolk and friends, visitors on even terms—Whartons, Morrises, Cadwaladers, Logans,—the old, proud Welsh, grandsons of Welsh, with at times Quaker people and the men in office, for madame is clever and well liked. I tell her she has a Quaker salon, which is not my wit, but true."
"I had supposed Friends too rigid for this."
"Oh, there are Quakers and Quakers, and sometimes the overseers feel called upon to remonstrate; and then there is an unpleasantness, and our hostess is all of a sudden moved by the spirit to say things, and has her claws out. And my rose, my rose Pearl, can be prickly, too."
"She does not look like it, sir."
"No? When does a young woman look like what she is or may be? She is a good girl—as good as God makes them; her wits as yet a bit muzzled by the custom of Friends. A fair bud—prophetic of what the rose will be."