Chapter 10

Mr. and Mrs. Spragg were both given to such long periods of ruminating
apathy that the student of inheritance might have wondered whence Undine
derived her overflowing activity. The answer would have been obtained
by observing her father's business life. From the moment he set foot
in Wall Street Mr. Spragg became another man. Physically the change
revealed itself only by the subtlest signs. As he steered his way to his
office through the jostling crowd of William Street his relaxed muscles
did not grow more taut or his lounging gait less desultory. His
shoulders were hollowed by the usual droop, and his rusty black
waistcoat showed the same creased concavity at the waist, the same
flabby prominence below. It was only in his face that the difference was
perceptible, though even here it rather lurked behind the features than
openly modified them: showing itself now and then in the cautious glint
of half-closed eyes, the forward thrust of black brows, or a tightening
of the lax lines of the mouth--as the gleam of a night-watchman's light
might flash across the darkness of a shuttered house-front. The shutters
were more tightly barred than usual, when, on a morning some two
weeks later than the date of the incidents last recorded, Mr. Spragg
approached the steel and concrete tower in which his office occupied a
lofty pigeon-hole. Events had moved rapidly and somewhat surprisingly in
the interval, and Mr. Spragg had already accustomed himself to the fact
that his daughter was to be married within the week, instead of awaiting
the traditional post-Lenten date. Conventionally the change meant little
to him; but on the practical side it presented unforeseen difficulties.
Mr. Spragg had learned within the last weeks that a New York marriage
involved material obligations unknown to Apex. Marvell, indeed, had
been loftily careless of such questions; but his grandfather, on the
announcement of the engagement, had called on Mr. Spragg and put before
him, with polished precision, the young man's financial situation.

Mr. Spragg, at the moment, had been inclined to deal with his visitor in
a spirit of indulgent irony. As he leaned back in his revolving chair,
with feet adroitly balanced against a tilted scrap basket, his air of
relaxed power made Mr. Dagonet's venerable elegance seem as harmless as
that of an ivory jack-straw--and his first replies to his visitor were
made with the mildness of a kindly giant.

"Ralph don't make a living out of the law, you say? No, it didn't strike
me he'd be likely to, from the talks I've had with him. Fact is, the
law's a business that wants--" Mr. Spragg broke off, checked by a
protest from Mr. Dagonet. "Oh, a PROFESSION, you call it? It ain't a
business?" His smile