No More Learning

Gradually he began to notice a great many corks floating by, one after
the other. The old woman saw them too, and said, waking out of a half
sleep: 'Misther John Sherman, we will be in the Mersey before evening.
Why are ye goin' among them savages in London, Misther John? Why don't
ye stay among your own people--for what have we in this life but a
mouthful of air? '


SECOND PART

MARGARET LELAND


I

Sherman and his mother rented a small house on the north side of St.
Peter's Square, Hammersmith. The front windows looked out on to the
old rank and green square, the windows behind on to a little patch
of garden round which the houses gathered and pressed as though they
already longed to trample it out. In this garden was a single tall pear
tree that never bore fruit.

Three years passed by without any notable event. Sherman went every day
to his office in Tower Hill Street, abused his work a great deal, and
was not unhappy perhaps. He was probably a bad clerk, but then nobody
was very exacting with the nephew of the head of the firm.

The firm of Sherman and Saunders, ship-brokers, was a long-established,
old-fashioned house. Saunders had been dead some years and old Michael
Sherman ruled alone--an old bachelor full of family pride and pride
in his wealth. He lived, for all that, in a very simple fashion. His
mahogany furniture was a little solider than other people's perhaps.
He did not understand display. Display finds its excuse in some taste
good or bad, and in a long industrious life Michael Sherman had never
found leisure to form one. He seemed to live only from habit. Year by
year he grew more silent, gradually ceasing to regard anything but his
family and his ships. His family were represented by his nephew and his
nephew's mother. He did not feel much affection for them. He believed
in his family--that was all. To remind him of the other goal of his
thoughts hung round his private office pictures with such inscriptions
as 'S. S. _Indus_ at the Cape of Good Hope,' 'The barque _Mary_ in the
Mozambique Channel,' 'The barque _Livingstone_ at Port Said,' and
many more. Every rope was drawn accurately with a ruler, and here and
there were added distant vessels sailing proudly by with all that
indifference to perspective peculiar to the drawings of sailors. On
every ship was the flag of the firm spread out to show the letters.

No man cared for old Michael Sherman. Every one liked John. Both were
silent, but the young man had sometimes a talkative fit. The old man
lived for his ledger, the young man for his dreams.