After their return to the hotel, Mr. Talbot sat down to a table, and went through a long calculation.

“It will cost you, Mr. Belcher,” said the factor, deliberately, “at least twenty-five thousand dollars to furnish that house satisfactorily.”

Mr. Belcher gave a long whistle.

“At least twenty-five thousand dollars, and I doubt whether you get off for less than thirty thousand.”

“Well, I’m in for it, and I’m going through,” said Mr. Belcher.

“Very well,” responded Talbot, “now let’s go to the best furnisher we can find.  I happen to know the man who is at the top of the style, and I suppose the best thing—­as you and I don’t know much about the matter—­is to let him have his own way, and hold him responsible for the results.”

“All right,” said Belcher; “show me the man.”

They found the arbiter of style in his counting-room.  Mr. Talbot approached him first, and held a long private conversation with him.  Mr. Belcher, in his self-complacency, waited, fancying that Talbot was representing his own importance and the desirableness of so rare a customer, and endeavoring to secure reasonable prices on a large bill.  In reality, he was arranging to get a commission out of the job for himself.

If it be objected to Mr. Talbot’s mode of giving assistance to his country friends, that it savored of mercenariness, amounting to villainy, it is to be said, on his behalf, that he was simply practicing the morals that Mr. Belcher had taught him.  Mr. Belcher had not failed to debauch or debase the moral standard of every man over whom he had any direct influence.  If Talbot had practiced his little game upon any other man, Mr. Belcher would have patted his shoulder and told him he was a “jewel.”  So much of Mr. Belcher’s wealth had been won by sharp and more than doubtful practices, that that wealth itself stood before the world as a premium on rascality, and thus became, far and wide, a demoralizing influence upon the feverishly ambitious and the young.  Besides, Mr. Talbot quieted what little conscience he had in the matter by the consideration that his commissions were drawn, not from Mr. Belcher, but from the profits which others would make out of him, and the further consideration that it was no more than right for him to get the money back that he had spent, and was spending, for his principal’s benefit.

Mr. Belcher was introduced, and the arbiter of style conversed learnedly of Tuscan, Pompeiian, Elizabethan, Louis Quatorze, buhl, marqueterie, &.c., &c., till the head of the proprietor, to whom all these words were strangers, and all his talk Greek, was thrown into a hopeless muddle.

Mr. Belcher listened to him as long as he could do so with patience, and then brought him to a conclusion by a slap upon his knee.

“Come, now!” said he, “you understand your business, and I understand mine.  If you were to take up guns and gutta-percha, I could probably talk your head off, but I don’t know anything about these things.  What I want is something right.  Do the whole thing up brown.  Do you understand that?”