e
river. Her hull was soon lost to his eyes, but he could see the streamer
fluttering at the mast-head over the masts of the other vessels. While
he looked it vanished--the ship was gone.

Often enough Mr. Lawrence Newt stood leaning his head against the
window-frame of his office after the ship had disappeared, and seemed
to be looking at the ferry-boats or at the lofty city of Brooklyn. But
he saw neither. Faster than ship ever sailed, or wind blew, or light
flashed, the thought of Lawrence Newt darted, and the merchant, seemingly
leaning against his office-window in South Street, was really sitting
under palm-trees, or dandling in a palanquin, or chatting in a strange
tongue, or gazing in awe upon snowier summits than the villagers of
Chamouni have ever seen.

And what was that dark little hand he seemed to himself to press?--and
what were those eyes, soft depths of exquisite darkness, into which
through his own eyes his soul seemed to be sinking?

There were clerks busily writing in the outer office. It was dark in
that office when Mr. Newt first occupied the rooms, and Thomas Tray, the
book-keeper, who had the lightest place, said that the eyes of Venables,
the youngest clerk, were giving out. Young Venables, a lad of sixteen,
supported a mother and sister and infirm father upon his five hundred
dollars a year.

"Eyes giving out in my service, Thomas Tray! I am ashamed of myself."

And Lawrence Newt hired the adjoining office, knocked down all the walls,
and introduced so much daylight that it shone not only into the eyes of
young Venables, but into those of his mother and sister and infirm
father.

It was scratch, scratch, scratch, all day long in the clerks' office.
Messengers were coming and going. Samples were brought in. Draymen came
for orders. Apple-women and pie-men dropped in about noon, and there were
plenty of cheap apples and cheap jokes when the peddlers were young
and pretty. Customers came and brother merchants, who went into Mr.
Lawrence Newt's room. They talked China news, and South American news,
and Mediterranean news. Their conversation was full of the names of
places of which poems and histories have been written. The merchants
joked complacent jokes. They gossiped a little when business had been
discussed. So young Whitloe was really to marry Magot's daughter, and the
Doolittle money would go to the Magots after all! And old Jacob Van
Boozenberg had actually left off knee-breeches and w