) You told me what I was to
do, and what to be paid; you told me afterwards, at intervals of years,
when I was to sign for the Firm, when I became a partner, when I became
the Firm. I know no more of it, or of myself."
"What am I like, Mr. Young Jackson?"
"You are like my father, I sometimes think. You are hard enough and cold
enough so to have brought up an acknowledged son. I see your scanty
figure, your close brown suit, and your tight brown wig; but you, too,
wear a wax mask to your death. You never by a chance remove it--it never
by a chance falls off--and I know no more of you."
Throughout this dialogue, the traveller spoke to himself at his window in
the morning, as he had spoken to himself at the Junction overnight. And
as he had then looked in the darkness, a man who had turned grey too
soon, like a neglected fire: so he now looked in the sun-light, an ashier
grey, like a fire which the brightness of the sun put out.
The firm of Barbox Brothers had been some offshoot or irregular branch of
the Public Notary and bill-broking tree. It had gained for itself a
griping reputation before the days of Young Jackson, and the reputation
had stuck to it and to him. As he had imperceptibly come into possession
of the dim den up in the corner of a court off Lombard Street, on whose
grimy windows the inscription Barbox Brothers had for many long years
daily interposed itself between him and the sky, so he had insensibly
found himself a personage held in chronic distrust, whom it was essential
to screw tight to every transaction in which he engaged, whose word was
never to be taken without his attested bond, whom all dealers with openly
set up guards and wards against.
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