Still later they set out northward
through the lamp-lit night for the older part of town, where resided the
aunt on whose behalf there was dunning to be done that night.
Charles Gardiner West asserted that he had not a thing in all this world
to do, and that erranding was only another way of taking a walk, when
you came to think of it. She was frankly glad of his company; to be
otherwise was to be fantastic; and now as they strolled she led him to
talk of his work, which was never difficult. For West, despite his
rising prosperity, was dissatisfied with his calling, the reason being,
as he himself sometimes put it, that his heart did not abide with the
money changers.
"Sometimes at night," he said seriously, "I look back over the busy day
and ask myself what it has all amounted to. Suppose I did all the
world's stock-jobbing, what would I really have accomplished? You may
say that I could take all the money I made and spend it for free
hospitals, but would I do it? No. The more I made, the more I'd want for
myself, the more all my interest and ambition would twine themselves
around the counting-room.
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