he not have thought that she looked like an angel
bending down toward him out of heaven?

It was not strange that Uncle Lawrence had sent him. For somehow Uncle
Lawrence had discovered that if there was any thing to go to May Newt,
there was nothing in the world that Gabriel Bennet was so anxious to do
as to carry it.

But while the young man was always so glad to go to Boniface Newt's
gloomy house--for some reason which he did not explain, and which even
his sister Ellen did not know--or, at least, which she pretended not to
know, although one evening that wily young girl talked with brother
Gabriel about May Newt, as if she had some particular purpose in the
conversation, until she seemed to have convinced herself of some hitherto
doubtful point--yet with all the willingness to go to the house, Gabriel
Bennet never went to the office of Boniface Newt, Son, & Co.

If he had done so it would not have been pleasant to him, for it was
perpetual field-day in the office. A few days after Uncle Lawrence's
visit to his nephew, the senior partner sat bending his hard, anxious
face over account-books and letters. The junior partner lounged in his
chair as if the office had been a club-room. The "Company" never
appeared.

"Father, I've just seen Sinker."

"D---- Sinker!"

"Come, come, father, let's be reasonable! Sinker says that the Canal will
be a clear case of twenty per cent, per annum for ten years at least, and
that we could afford to lose a cent or two upon the Bilbo iron to make it
up, over and over again."

Mr. Abel Newt threw his leg over the arm of the chair and looked at his
boot. Mr. Boniface Newt threw his head around suddenly and fiercely.

"And what's Sinker's commission? How much money do you suppose he has to
put in? How much stock will he take?"

"He has sold out in the Mallow Mines to put in," said Abel, a little
doggedly.

"Are you sure?"

"He says so," returned Abel, shortly.

"Don't believe a word of it!" said his father, tartly, turning back again
to his desk.

Abel put both hands in his pockets, and both feet upon the ground, side
by side, and rocked them upon the heels backward and forward, looking all
the time at his father. His face grew cloudy--more cloudy every moment.
At length he said,

"I think we'd better do it."

His father did not speak or move. He seemed to have heard nothing, and
to be only inwardly cursing the state of things revealed by the books and
papers before him