, and held a long private conversation with him. Mr.
Belcher, in his self-complacency, waited, fancying that Talbot was
representing his own importance and the desirableness of so rare a
customer, and endeavoring to secure reasonable prices on a large bill.
In reality, he was arranging to get a commission out of the job for
himself.

If it be objected to Mr. Talbot's mode of giving assistance to his
country friends, that it savored of mercenariness, amounting to
villainy, it is to be said, on his behalf, that he was simply practicing
the morals that Mr. Belcher had taught him. Mr. Belcher had not failed
to debauch or debase the moral standard of every man over whom he had
any direct influence. If Talbot had practiced his little game upon any
other man, Mr. Belcher would have patted his shoulder and told him he
was a "jewel." So much of Mr. Belcher's wealth had been won by sharp and
more than doubtful practices, that that wealth itself stood before the
world as a premium on rascality, and thus became, far and wide, a
demoralizing influence upon the feverishly ambitious and the young.
Besides, Mr. Talbot quieted what little conscience he had in the matter
by the consideration that his commissions were drawn, not from Mr.
Belcher, but from the profits which others would make out of him, and
the further consideration that it was no more than right for him to get
the money back that he had spent, and was spending, for his principal's
benefit.

Mr. Belcher was introduced, and the arbiter of style conversed learnedly
of Tuscan, Pompeiian, Elizabethan, Louis Quatorze, buhl, _marqueterie_,
&.c., &c., till the head of the proprietor, to whom all these words were
strangers, and all his talk Greek, was thrown into a hopeless muddle.

Mr. Belcher listened to him as long as he could do so with patience, and
then brought him to a conclusion by a slap upon his knee.

"Come, now!" said he, "you understand your business, and I understand
mine. If you were to take up guns and gutta-percha, I could probably
talk your head off, but I don't know anything about these things. What I
want is something right. Do the whole thing up brown. Do you understand
that?"

The arbiter of style smiled pityingly, and admitted that he comprehended
his customer.

It was at last arranged that the latter should make a study of the
house, and furnish it according to his best ability, within a specified
sum of expenditure and a specified period of time; an