“My dear fellow, I never could get up an ecstasy!”
“Still waters run deep, Holcombe. I suspect that is the case with you, you sly fellow.”
Monday came, and the two friends were again at No. 25. Rachel admitted them as before, and showed them into the old lace-merchant's den. He was alone, and looked very eager; but his wasted, wrinkled hands and dried-up face spoke his miserly character, and froze the sympathy he so little cared to receive. He laid out his precious wares with trembling fingers, and it [pg 419] was curious to see these cobweb treasures drawn from common drawers and boxes, and heaped on a rickety deal table near the stove that was just lighted, because he was still so ill. Everything about the room looked cold and hungry; the floor was bare; the paint on the walls dirty and discolored; and an untidy assortment of tin pans and cheap crockery littered the neighborhood of the stove. The window looked into a back-yard, and what panes were not broken were obscured by dirt. In strange contrast to all this was a bouquet of fresh flowers on a chair.
While Ellice and the old man were bargaining, Holcombe fastened his eye on the flowers, conjecturing well whose present they were.
The old Jew asked enormous prices for his laces, and gave marvellous accounts of the difficulties he had sustained in procuring them as an excuse for his exorbitant demands. So the time seemed long to Henry, who knew little or nothing about such things, when suddenly Rachel appeared at the door with a basin of soup. “Fraulein Löwenberg sent you this,” she said to the old man, and then to the strangers: “You must excuse us; he is too weak to do without this at the accustomed time, and the fraulein is gone out.”
“Gone out!” querulously said the miser. “Gone out without coming to see me!”
“She knew you were engaged,” retorted Rachel. “You will see her again to-night.” She spoke as to a spoiled child.
“Well, well, business must be first, and she has business as well as I have.” And he went on with his flourishing declamations over his lovely laces.
Holcombe understood why she had omitted her morning's visit to her old protégé, and, indeed, it would have been unlike his ideal of her had she acted otherwise.
“Have you nearly done, Ellice?” he said, coming up to the table.