g small and quiet
and elegant, where your bell is answered and you--your person is
recognized."
"They keep running to see if I have rung before I have touched the
bell," said Newman "and as for my person they are always bowing and
scraping to it."
"I suppose you are always tipping them. That's very bad style."
"Always? By no means. A man brought me something yesterday, and then
stood loafing in a beggarly manner. I offered him a chair and asked him
if he wouldn't sit down. Was that bad style?"
"Very!"
"But he bolted, instantly. At any rate, the place amuses me. Hang your
elegance, if it bores me. I sat in the court of the Grand Hotel last
night until two o'clock in the morning, watching the coming and going,
and the people knocking about."
"You're easily pleased. But you can do as you choose--a man in your
shoes. You have made a pile of money, eh?"
"I have made enough"
"Happy the man who can say that? Enough for what?"
"Enough to rest awhile, to forget the confounded thing, to look about
me, to see the world, to have a good time, to improve my mind, and,
if the fancy takes me, to marry a wife." Newman spoke slowly, with
a certain dryness of accent and with frequent pauses. This was his
habitual mode of utterance, but it was especially marked in the words I
have just quoted.
"Jupiter! There's a programme!" cried Mr. Tristram. "Certainly, all that
takes money, especially the wife; unless indeed she gives it, as mine
did. And what's the story? How have you done it?"
Newman had pushed his hat back from his forehead, folded his arms, and
stretched his legs. He listened to the music, he looked about him at the
bustling crowd, at the plashing fountains, at the nurses and the babies.
"I have worked!" he answered at last.
Tristram looked at him for some moments, and allowed his placid eyes to
measure his friend's generous longitude and rest upon his comfortably
contemplative face. "What have you worked at?" he asked.
"Oh, at several things."
"I suppose you're a smart fellow, eh?"
Newman continued to look at the nurses and babies; they imparted to the
scene a kind of primordial, pastoral simplicity. "Yes," he said at last,
"I suppose I am." And then, in answer to his companion's inquiries,
he related briefly his history since their last meeting. It was an
intensely Western story, and it dealt with enterprises which it will be
needless to introduce to the reader in detail. Newman had come out
of
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