'My dear fellow, how are you?'
'Very well, Cragin, how are you?'
'Good as new—never better in my life—how goes the world with you?'
The last speaker was not more than thirty-three, but a bald spot on the top of his head, and a slight falling-in of his mouth, caused by premature decay of the teeth, made him seem several years older. He had marked but not regular features, and a restless, dark eye, which opened and shut with a peculiar wink that kept time with the motion of his lips in speaking. His clothes were cut in a loose, jaunty style, and his manner, though brusque and abrupt, betokened, like his face, a free, frank, manly character. He was ten or twelve years the junior of the other, and as unlike him as one man can be unlike another.
The older gentleman, as I have said, was tall and dark. He had a high, bold forehead, and wore heavy gray whiskers, trimmed with the utmost nicety, and meeting under a sharp, narrow chin. His face was large and full, and his nose pointed and prominent, but his mouth was small, and gathered in at the corners like a rat's; and, as if to add to the rat-resemblance, its small, white teeth seemed borrowed from the jaws of that animal. There was a stately precision in his manner, and a stealthy softness in his tread, that would have impressed a stranger unfavorably; but I knew him. We had been boys together, and he loved me as he loved his own son. How well he loved him, the reader will learn, if he follows the course of my story.
These two gentlemen—Mr. Hallet and Mr. Cragin—were the senior partners in the great house of Russell, Rollins & Co.
Replying satisfactorily to the inquiry of Mr. Cragin, I turned to the older partner, and said:
'Well, Mr. Hallet, how does Frank get on?'
'Oh! very well—knows a little too much, like most young men of his age, but he does very well.'
''Very well,' Mr. Ballet! d—d if he don't—he's the smartest boy living—made a clean forty thousand for us not two months ago—forced it on Hallet against his better judgment!' And Mr. Cragin laughed till he showed all that was left of two rows of tobacco-stained teeth.