Randolph Anderson laughed. Aside from regard for his mother's feelings, he had not the slightest scruple against his business venture. On the contrary, it rather amused him. He must have had a latent taste for business, for he quite enjoyed studying the markets and purchasing his stock in trade. He purchased wisely, too. He offered a choice stock of goods, or, rather, his two salesmen did. He himself did not sell much over his own counters, except in the case of a great rush of business. But it was not from the least sensation of superiority. It was merely because of a distrust of his own ability to acquit himself well in such a totally different branch of industry. Anderson was cast on unusually simple and ingenuous lines. Nobody would have believed it, but he was actually somewhat modest and shy before his own clerks, and realized sensitively his own lack of experience. So he had a way of subsiding when customers appeared, and retreating to his office in the rear of the building. He spent most of his time in this office. It was a very pleasant one, overlooking the river, on which steamboats and canal-boats travelled to the city. From Anderson's office the bank of red clay soil sloped to the water's edge. He could see the gleam of the current through the shag of young trees which found root in the unpromising soil. Now and then the tall mast of a sailing-vessel glided by, now the smoke-stack of a steamer. Often the quiet was broken by the panting breath of a tug. Often into his field of vision flapped the wet clothes from the line strung along the deck of a canal-boat. The canal ran along beside the regular current of the river, separated from it by a narrow tow-path. Farther down, the great railroad bridge crossed the stream, and at all hours he could catch the swift glisten of the train-windows as they shot past.