nstant procrastination there was a personal activity which was
amusingly misleading. Leaving the house in the morning, David would walk
to his foundery, a distance of a mile, with the most rapid step possible
which was not a run; the swing of his long arms, the slight frown of
preoccupation from business cares (it must have been that), would have
led any one to believe that, once his office reached, this man would
devote himself to his work with the greatest energy, would make every
moment tell. But once his office reached, this man devoted himself to
nothing, that is, to nothing of importance; he arrived breathless, and
hung up his hat; he rubbed his hands, and walked about the room; he
glanced over the letters, and made plans for answering them, pleasing
himself with the idea of the vigorous things he should say, and changing
the form of his proposed sentences in his own mind more than once; for
David wrote a very good letter, and was proud of it. Then he sharpened
all the pencils industriously, taking pains to give each one a very fine
point. He jotted down in neat figures with one of them, little
sums--sums which had no connection with the foundery, however, but
concerned themselves with something he had read the night before,
perhaps, as the probable population of London in A.D. 1966, or the
estimated value of a ton of coal in the year 3000. Then he would do a
little work on his plan (David made beautiful plans) for the house which
he hoped some day to build. And he would stare out of the window by the
hour, seeing nothing in particular, but having the vague idea that as he
was in his office, and at his desk, he was attending to business as
other men attended to it; what else was an office for?

Evert, as a boy, had always felt an interest in this whimsical cousin,
who came every now and then to see his father, with some new enterprise
(David was strong in enterprises) to consult him about--an enterprise
which was infallibly to bring in this time a large amount of money. But
this time was never David's time. And in the mean while his daughters
continued to appear and grow. Evert, left master, had had more faith in
David than his father had had; or perhaps it was more charity; for his
cousin had always been a source of refreshment to him--this humorous,
sweet-tempered man, who, with his gray-sprinkled hair and thin temples,
his well-known incompetency, and his helpless family behind him, had yet
no more care on his f