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Am I to understand, Sir by this coolness, that our bargain is broken? that the two fortunes are not to be brought together, and that the lady is not to be your wife?" "Harkee, Mr. Van Beverout; one who is saving of his income and sparing of his words, can have no pressing necessity for the money of others; and, on occasion, he may afford to speak plainly.
The step of the free-trader, as he advanced nearer to his companion, was full of dignity; and his keen eye glowed with the resentment of an offended man. "Alderman Van Beverout," he said, with stern rebuke in his voice, "you receive your daughter, stainless as was her unfortunate mother, when necessity compelled him whose being was wrapped up in hers, to trust her beneath your roof.
When Myndert Van Beverout was alone, he shut the windows of the pavilion of his niece, and retired to his own part of the dwelling. Here the thrifty burgher first busied himself in making sundry calculations, with a zeal that proved how much his mind was engrossed by the occupation.
Such, in some measure, was the nature of the pain that Alderman Van Beverout was condemned to feel, when at leisure to reflect on the ill-judged measure that had been taken by la belle Barbérie.
"Which is not a coin to satisfy a creditor, my Lord," said the caustic Myndert. "Therein has truth been, pithily, spoken. This is an ill-judged step, Alderman Van Beverout, that lets a gentleman out by night, like the ghost in Hamlet, to flee into the narrow house with the crowing of the cock.
Then kicking the fore-sheet clear of its elect, and suffering the sail to fill, he stepped from one butter-tub to another, making a stepping-stone of the lap of a countryman by the way, and alighted in the stern-sheets in the midst of the party of Alderman Van Beverout, with the agility and fearlessness of a feathered Mercury.
Van Beverout will see no pretension in believing myself as good a judge of wind and tide, as even he himself can be." "You are said to command Her Majesty's sloop with skill, Captain Ludlow, and it is creditable to the colony, that it has produced so good an officer; though I believe your grandfather came into the province, so lately as on the restoration of King Charles the Second?"
"Captain Ludlow is not about to accuse Alderman Van Beverout of a connexion with such a man!" exclaimed the burgher, rising as it were involuntarily, and actually recoiling a foot or two, apparently under the force of indignation and surprise. "Sir, I am not commissioned to accuse any of the Queen's subjects.
"Sir, there are many in this colony who have great reason to distrust their senses, though none can be mistaken in believing they see Alderman Van Beverout in a well-employed man. He that dealeth in the produce of the beaver must have the animal's perseverance and forethought!
"Thou wouldst still deal in the contraband!" "Well, well, multiplying idle words is not multiplying gold. The list of the articles introduced can be forthcoming?" "It is here, and ready to be examined. But there is a fancy come over me, Alderman Van Beverout, which, like others of my caprices, thou knowest must have its way. There should be a witness to our bargain." "Judges and juries!
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