"You'll find wood in the further end of the closet," said Winthrop smiling. "I am afraid Mother Hubbard's shelves are in classical order —that is, with nothing on them."
"I sha'n't want anything more till dinner," said Rufus. "Where do you dine?"
"At the chop-house to-day."
"I'll meet you there. Won't you be home till night?"
"I never am."
"Well —till dinner," said Rufus waving his hand. And his brother left him.
Turning away from the table and his emptied dishes and fragmentary beef-bone, Rufus sat before the little fireplace, gazing into it at the red coals, and taking casual and then wistful note of various things about his brother's apartment that told of the man that lived there.
"Spare!" — said Rufus to himself, as his eye marked the scanty carpet, the unpainted few wooden chairs, the curtainless bed, the rough deal shelves of the closet which shewed at the open door, and the very economical chimney place, which now, the wind having gone down, did no longer smoke; — "Spare! — but he'll have a better place to live in, one of these days, and will furnish it." — And visions of mahogany and of mirrors glanced across Rufus's imagination, how unlike the images around him and before his bodily eye. — "Spare! — poor fellow! — he's working hard just now; but pay-time will come. And orderly, —just like him; his books piled in order on the window-sill — his papers held down by one on the table, the clean floor, — yes," — and rising Rufus even went and looked into the closet. There was the little stack of wood and parcel of kindling, likewise in order; there stood Winthrop's broom in a corner; and there hung Winthrop's few clothes that were not folded away in his trunk. Mother Hubbard's department was in the same spare and thoroughly kept style; and Rufus came back thoughtfully to his seat before the fire.
"Like him, every bit of it, from the books to the broom. Like him; — his own mind is just as free from dust or confusion; rather more richly furnished. What a mind it is! and what wealth he'll make out of it, for pocket and for name both. And I —"
Here Rufus's lucubrations left his brother and went off upon a sea of calculations, landing at Fleet, Norton & Co. and then coming back to Mannahatta and Mr. Haye's counting-room. He had plenty of time for them, as no business obviously could be done till the day after to-morrow.