Walter stammered an excuse to the young fellow in the shop for not having sent his letter by post. The fellow didn't understand him, but threw the letter carelessly into a box containing a few dozen others that were awaiting the favorable consideration of Messrs. Motto, Business & Co.
The fellow was busy with some Turkish battles in glaring colors, and declined to enter into any conversation with our hero. Walter's mouth watered for a bright picture of Grecian chivalry. But what good did it do? He had no money; and, besides, he was out for business, not for heroic deeds.
Arrived at home he received the usual scolding. His mother maintained that he had certainly not entered the shop in a "respectable" manner; otherwise the young gentleman would have given him a friendlier reception. She was afraid that those excellent gentlemen, Motto, Business & Co., would take this into consideration to his detriment.
"And you say there were already a whole lot of letters there? You see, Stoffel--if he only isn't too late! That's the way--those people would break their necks or be first. And who knows but what some of them are Roman Catholics? I wonder if they all think they're moral and well-behaved. You can just see what kind of people there are in the world!"
Walter had to go back to Maaskamp's and get the address of the firm in question. The idea was for him to call on the firm in person and thus get ahead of everybody else. Juffrouw Pieterse wanted to bet her ears that not a one of the other applicants could boast of a father who had sold Parisian shoes.
"Tell them that! Your father never took a stitch in his life. He didn't even know how to. It's only to prove that we had a business, too. He never had an awl in his hand--isn't it so, Stoffel?"
Those eminently respectable gentlemen, Motto, Business & Co., lived--I don't know where they lived; but they had founded on the Zeedyk a cigar store and a circulating library. It was probably not far from the place where six or eight centuries earlier a few fishermen had founded the greatest commercial city of Europe.
Walter found one of those worthy gentlemen behind the counter. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and was engaged in weighing out some snuff for an old woman. "Business" was evidently being carried on.