" He would never again engage in
any transaction resembling his compact with Moffatt. Even now he was not
sure there had been anything crooked in that; but the fact of his having
instinctively referred the point to Mr. Spragg rather than to his
grandfather implied a presumption against it.
His partners were quick to profit by his sudden spurt of energy, and
his work grew no lighter. He was not only the youngest and most recent
member of the firm, but the one who had so far added least to the volume
of its business. His hours were the longest, his absences, as summer
approached, the least frequent and the most grudgingly accorded. No
doubt his associates knew that he was pressed for money and could not
risk a break. They "worked" him, and he was aware of it, and submitted
because he dared not lose his job. But the long hours of mechanical
drudgery were telling on his active body and undisciplined nerves. He
had begun too late to subject himself to the persistent mortification of
spirit and flesh which is a condition of the average business life; and
after the long dull days in the office the evenings at his grandfather's
whist-table did not give him the counter-stimulus he needed.
Almost every one had gone out of town; but now and then Miss Ray came to
dine, and Ralph, seated beneath the family portraits and opposite the
desiccated Harriet, who had already faded to the semblance of one of
her own great-aunts, listened languidly to the kind of talk that the
originals might have exchanged about the same table when New York
gentility centred in the Battery and the Bowling Green.
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