Eve wrote again, offering this time to renew the
bills and pay all the costs hitherto incurred. To this the clerk
consented, provided that Sechard senior guaranteed payment. So Eve
walked over to Marsac, taking Kolb and her mother with her. She braved
the old vinedresser, and so charming was she, that the old man's face
relaxed, and the puckers smoothed out at the sight of her; but when,
with inward quakings, she came to speak of a guarantee, she beheld a
sudden and complete change of the tippleographic countenance.
"If I allowed my son to put his hand to the lips of my cash box
whenever he had a mind, he would plunge it deep into the vitals, he
would take all I have!" cried old Sechard. "That is the way with
children; they eat up their parents' purse. What did I do myself, eh?
_I_ never cost my parents a farthing. Your printing office is standing
idle. The rats and the mice do all the printing that is done in
it. . . . You have a pretty face; I am very fond of you; you are a
careful, hard-working woman; but that son of mine!--Do you know what
David is? I'll tell you--he is a scholar that will never do a stroke
of work! If I had reared him, as I was reared myself, without knowing
his letters, and if I had made a 'bear' of him, like his father before
him, he would have money saved and put out to interest by now. . .
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