There would be no
mother, no sisters, to absorb her time and distract her thoughts from her
husband, perhaps prejudice her against him. Domestic life for those two
must needs be free from all the petty jars, the overshadowing clouds no
bigger than a man's hand, forerunners of tempest, which Mr. Fenton had
heard of in many households.
He was never weary of thinking about that life which was to be.
Everything else he thought of was now considered only in relation to that
one subject. He applied himself to business with a new ardour; never
before had he been so anxious to grow rich.
CHAPTER IV.
JOHN SALTRAM.
The offices of Fenton and Co. in Great St. Helens were handsome,
prosperous-looking premises, consisting of two large outer rooms, where
half-a-dozen indefatigable clerks sat upon high stools before ponderous
mahogany desks, and wrote industriously all day long; and an inner and
smaller apartment, where there was a faded Turkey-carpet instead of the
kamptulicon that covered the floor of the outer offices, a couple of
capacious, red-morocco-covered arm-chairs, and a desk of substantial and
somewhat legal design, on which Gilbert Fenton was wont to write the more
important letters of the house. In all the offices there were iron safes,
which gave one a notion of limitless wealth stored away in the shape of
bonds and bills, if not actual gold and bank-notes; and upon all the
walls there were coloured and uncoloured engravings of ships framed and
glazed, and catalogues of merchandise that had been sold, or was to be
sold, hanging loosely one on the other.
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