Peter laughed:
"Yes, BANKERS--all in capital letters--the imitation kind. Breen
came from some place out of town and made a lucky hit in his first
year--mines or something--I forget what. Oh, but you must know
that it takes very little now-a-days to make a full-fledged
banker. All you have to do is to hoist in a safe--through the
window, generally, with the crowd looking on; rail off half the
office; scatter some big ledgers over two or three newly varnished
desks; move in a dozen arm-chairs, get a ticker, a black-board and
a boy with a piece of chalk; be pleasant to every fellow you meet
with his own or somebody else's money in his pocket, and there you
are. But we won't talk of these things--it isn't kind, and,
really, I hardly know Breen, and I'm quite sure he wouldn't know
me if he saw me, and he's a very decent gentleman in many ways, I
hear. He never overdraws his account, any way--never tries--and
that's more than I can say for some of his neighbors."
The fog, which earlier in the afternoon had been but a blue haze,
softening the hard outlines of the street, had now settled down in
earnest, choking up the doorways, wiping out the tops of the
buildings, their facades starred here and there with gas-jets, and
making a smudged drawing of the columns of the Custom House
opposite.
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