ward on the long table towards the auctioneer. Frits said he looked very pale, and a gentleman who was in charge of the sale had scolded him for having dropped a couple of issues of the “Aglaia,” which seemed to me a clumsy thing to do, for it is a charming collection of ladies’ fancy work. Mary and the Rosemeyers—who are sugar people—take it in and share the expense. She tats from it . . . from the “Aglaia,” I mean. But over this “rowing” Frits heard that he earned fifteen pence a day. “Do you think I’m going to throw away fifteen pence a day on you?” the gentleman had said. I calculated that fifteen pence a day—I think Sundays and holidays cannot count, otherwise he would have mentioned a monthly or yearly salary—that fifteen pence a day makes two hundred and twenty-five guilders a year. I am quick in my decisions—when one has been in business so long, one always knows at once what to do—and next morning early I was at Ripesucker’s. That’s the name of the bookseller who had held the sale. I asked for the man who had dropped the “Aglaia.”
“He’s got the sack,” said Ripesucker. “He was lazy, pedantic and sickly.”
I bought a small box of wafers, and at once decided to give our Bastians another chance. I could not make up my mind so to turn an old man out into the street. Severe, but, where it is permissible, kindly, this has always been my principle. Still I never neglect to learn anything that may be useful in the business, and so I asked Ripesucker where Shawlman lived. He gave me the address, and I wrote it down.
I was constantly pondering over my book, but as I love the truth, I must frankly confess that I did not know how to go about it. One thing is certain: the materials I had found in Shawlman’s parcel were of importance to coffee-brokers. The only question was, how was I to set about sifting the materials and putting them together properly. Every broker knows the importance of properly sorting out the various parcels of coffee.
