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Page 23
Mr. Dyke heaved a long, deliberate sigh, and allowed his eyes to
wander slowly round the room, before replying.
"You are not a family man, Mr. MacGentle, sir! Don't blame you, sir!
Your memory, perhaps--But no matter! The nurse who stole the child
was, I presume, the same who rescued her from the fire?"
Mr. Dyke perhaps intended to give a delicately ironical emphasis to
this question, but his irony was apt to be a rather unwieldy and
unmistakable affair. The truth was, he was a little staggered by the
President's circumstantial statement; whence his deliberation, and his
not entirely pertinent rejoinder about "a family man."
"And why not the same, sir? I ask you, why not the same?" demanded Mr.
MacGentle, with slender imperiousness.
But, by this time, Mr. Dyke had thought of a new argument.
"The little girl, I understood you to say, was dark? Since she was the
twin-sister of one of Mr. Balder Helwyse's complexion, that is odd,
Mr. MacGentle,--odd, sir." And the solid family man fixed his sharp
brown eyes full upon the unsubstantial bachelor. The latter's delicate
nostrils expanded, and a pink flush rose to his faded cheeks. He was
now as haughty and superb as a paladin.
"I will discuss business subjects with my subordinates, Mr. Dyke; not
other subjects, if you please! This dispute was not begun by me. Let
it be carried no further, sir! Twins are not necessarily, nor
invariably, of the same complexion. Let nothing more be said, Mr.
Dyke. I trust the little girl may yet be found and restored to her
family--to--to her brother! I trust she may yet be found, sir!" And he
glared at Mr. Dyke aggressively.
"I trust you may live to see it, Mr. MacGentle, sir!" said the
confidential clerk, shifting his ground in a truly masterly manner;
and before the President could recover, he had bowed and gone out. Ten
minutes afterwards MacGentle opened the door, and lo! Dyke himself on
the threshold.
"Mr. Dyke!"
"Mr. MacGentle!" in the same breath.
"I--Mr. Dyke, let me apologize for my asperity,--for my rudeness,"
says MacGentle, stepping forward and holding out his thin white hand,
his eyebrows more raised than ever, the corners of his mouth more
depressed. "I am sincerely sorry that--that--"
"O sir!" cries the square clerk, grasping the thin hand in both his
square palms; "O sir! O sir! No, no!--no, no! I was just coming to beg
you--My fault,--my fault, Mr. MacGentle, sir! No, no!"
Thus incoherently ended the quarrel between these two old friends, the
dispute being left undecided. But the important point was established
that Balder Helwyse was insured a practice in Boston, in case his
uncle Glyphic's fortune failed to enrich him.
VIII.
A COLLISION IMMINENT.
A large, handsome steamer was the "Empire State," of the line which
ran between Newport and New York. She was painted white, had
walking-beam engines, and ornamented paddle-boxes, and had been known
to run nearly twenty knots in an hour. On the evening of the
twenty-seventh of May, in the year of which we write, she left her
Newport dock as usual, with a full list of passengers. On getting out
of the harbor, she steamed into a bank of solid fog, and only got out
of it the next morning, just before passing Hellgate, at the head of
East River, New York. On the passage down Long Island Sound she met
with an accident. She ran into the schooner Resurrection, which was
lying becalmed across her course, carrying away most of the schooner's
bowsprit, but doing no serious damage. This, however, was not the
worst. On arriving in New York, it was found that one of the
passengers was missing! He had fallen overboard during the night,
possibly at the time of the collision.
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