But to Arthur, the softness and good taste and beauty of framing seemed inspiration fit for any poet. If the evening was not one of true happiness, it was an excellent worldly counterfeit. After Miss Lenoir went in, he stayed out alone, watching the river. The other guests, successively, sought the drawing-room; and soon he heard Mrs. Hay’s voice, singing a simple Scotch ballad, and singing it very well. Now, any cultivated foreman’s daughter, in the factory village, would have sung in bad Italian, and not sung well. As Arthur stood leaning over the balustrade in the terrace, he heard low voices; and looking down, he recognized, in the moonlight, Mr. Caryl Wemyss and his hostess. Their talk seemed to have come to an end; for as she rose, he seized her white hand and imprinted (as the dime novels say), with studied grace, a kiss upon it. CHAPTER XIX. A COACH AND FOUR COUPLES. Several days passed by in much the same way; and truly a pleasant way enough it was. Arthur went now and then to town; but it was easy to get vacations in Townley & Tamms’s office, and the inmates were mutually conceding upon this point, particularly when the absence was known to be connected with people likely to be valuable, as clients, to the firm. And perhaps Arthur had a secret notion that his visit at Mrs. Levison Gower’s was an advancement more speedy and notable than anything that was likely to come to him in the office while he was away. For, after all, in her society he was getting the ultimate result of all labors and seeing what it was that people realized when they were successful here on earth. Townley urged Arthur strongly to avail himself of Mrs. Gower’s hospitality to its utmost limit. It was a principle of his philosophy of life that it was the part of a clever man to take things directly rather than attain to them gradually; to grasp the fruits, and not cultivate the tree. “Any country bumpkin, any ordinary mechanic, can do that,” he would say. “But we in New York, in Wall Street, sit at the counter on which is poured the net earnings, the savings, the symbols of title to all the creations of a mighty nation. Ten thousand men may work to build a railroad, for instance, and ten thousand more to run it; and the clean result of all their toil and trouble, free of all dross and surplusage, is turned into our hands, portable and convenient, in the shape of a few engraved certificates of stock, or bonds, or banknotes. Presto! change! and some of them are in my pocket, and some in yours, and perhaps a new bit of paper, issued by us for the balance.” Arthur found Charlie a much more intellectual fellow than he had thought at first.