last moment, and then stepping
ashore, with as little waste of time as Lapham himself, on the
gang-plank which the deck-hands had laid hold of. He touched his hat
to her from the wharf to reassure her of his escape from being carried
away with her, and the next moment his smiling face hid itself in the
crowd.

He walked on smiling up the long wharf, encumbered with trucks and
hacks and piles of freight, and, taking his way through the deserted
business streets beyond this bustle, made a point of passing the door
of Lapham's warehouse, on the jambs of which his name and paint were
lettered in black on a square ground of white. The door was still
open, and Corey loitered a moment before it, tempted to go upstairs and
fetch away some foreign letters which he had left on his desk, and
which he thought he might finish up at home. He was in love with his
work, and he felt the enthusiasm for it which nothing but the work we
can do well inspires in us. He believed that he had found his place in
the world, after a good deal of looking, and he had the relief, the
repose, of fitting into it. Every little incident of the momentous,
uneventful day was a pleasure in his mind, from his sitting down at his
desk, to which Lapham's boy brought him the foreign letters, till his
rising from it an hour ago. Lapham had been in view within his own
office, but he had given Corey no formal reception, and had, in fact,
not spoken to him till toward the end of the forenoon, when he suddenly
came out of his den with some more letters in his hand, and after a
brief "How d'ye do?" had spoken a few words about them, and left them
with him. He was in his shirt-sleeves again, and his sanguine person
seemed to radiate the heat with which he suffered. He did not go out
to lunch, but had it brought to him in his office, where Corey saw him
eating it before he left his own desk to go out and perch on a swinging
seat before the long counter of a down-town restaurant. He observed
that all the others lunched at twelve, and he resolved to anticipate
his usual hour. When he returned, the pretty girl who had been
clicking away at a type-writer all the morning was neatly putting out
of sight the evidences of pie from the table where her machine stood,
and was preparing to go on with her copying. In his office Lapham lay
asleep in his arm-chair, with a newspaper over his face.

Now, while Corey lingered at the entrance to the stairway, these two
came