f such confidences,
and on the evening of the first day in the counting-house he whispered
to Rachel that Joseph had taken to trade as a duck to the water, as the
saying is.

Day after day he watched his son's progress in administration, saying
nothing, waiting for the head clerk to endorse his opinion that there
were the makings of a first-rate man in Joseph. He was careful not to
ask any leading questions, but he could not refrain from letting the
conversation drop, so that the clerk might have an opportunity of
expressing his opinion of Master Joseph's business capacities. But the
clerk made no remark: it might as well have been that Joseph was not in
the counting-house; Dan had begun to hate his clerk, who had been with
him for thirty years. He had brought him from Arimathea and couldn't
dismiss him; he could only look into his eyes appealingly. At last the
clerk spoke, and his words were like manna in the desert; and,
overjoyed, Dan wondered how it was that he could have refrained so long.
It was concerning a certain falling off in an order: if Master Joseph
were to go on a circuit through the Greek cities--Dan could have thrown
his arms about his clerk for these words, but it were better to
dissimulate. You think then that Joseph understands the business
sufficiently? The clerk acquiesced, and it was a great day, of course,
the day Joseph went forth; and in a few weeks Dan had proof that his
confidence in his son's business aptitudes was not misplaced. Joseph
showed himself to be suited to the enterprise by his engaging manner as
well as by his knowledge of Hebrew and Greek, the two languages
procuring him an admission into the confidences of Jew and Gentile
alike.

The length of these excursions was from three to four weeks, and when
Joseph returned home for an interval his parents disputed as to whether
he should spend his holiday in the counting-house or the dwelling-house.
So to avoid giving offence to either, and for his own pleasure Joseph
often spent these days on the boats with the fishers, learning their
craft from them, losing himself often in meditations how the draught of
fishes might be increased by a superior kind of net: interested in his
trade far too much, Rachel said. His mind seemed bent on it always;
whereas she would have liked to have heard him tell of all the countries
he had been to and of all the people he had seen, but it was always
about salt fish that he was talking: how many barrels