y conversation with our hero. Walter's
mouth watered for a bright picture of Grecian chivalry. But what good
did it do? He had no money; and, besides, he was out for business,
not for heroic deeds.

"Later!" he thought.

Arrived at home he received the usual scolding. His mother maintained
that he had certainly not entered the shop in a "respectable" manner;
otherwise the young gentleman would have given him a friendlier
reception. She was afraid that those excellent gentlemen, Motto,
Business & Co., would take this into consideration to his detriment.

"And you say there were already a whole lot of letters there? You
see, Stoffel--if he only isn't too late! That's the way--those people
would break their necks or be first. And who knows but what some of
them are Roman Catholics? I wonder if they all think they're moral
and well-behaved. You can just see what kind of people there are in
the world!"

Walter had to go back to Maaskamp's and get the address of the firm
in question. The idea was for him to call on the firm in person and
thus get ahead of everybody else. Juffrouw Pieterse wanted to bet her
ears that not a one of the other applicants could boast of a father
who had sold Parisian shoes.

"Tell them that! Your father never took a stitch in his life. He
didn't even know how to. It's only to prove that we had a business,
too. He never had an awl in his hand--isn't it so, Stoffel?"

Those eminently respectable gentlemen, Motto, Business & Co., lived--I
don't know where they lived; but they had founded on the Zeedyk a
cigar store and a circulating library. It was probably not far from
the place where six or eight centuries earlier a few fishermen had
founded the greatest commercial city of Europe.

Walter found one of those worthy gentlemen behind the counter. He was
in his shirt-sleeves, and was engaged in weighing out some snuff for
an old woman. "Business" was evidently being carried on.

As Walter had formed no conception of "responsible business firm,"
he was far from thinking that the gentlemen had claimed too much for
themselves. With his peculiar timidity he even reproached himself
for not having understood the conception "business" before.

Now he understood it. Business meant to stand behind a counter,
in shirt-sleeves, and weigh snuff. And, too, on the Zeedyk.

The cigar store occupied only half the width of the house, and was
connected with the circulating library by a side door. Motto, Busin