" He held out to Eunice a
newly minted Brazilian goldpiece. "Good-bye," he addressed her; "command
me if I can be of any use." She clutched the gold tightly, and Jasper
Penny led her out into the winter street. "We must have dinner," he said
gravely. "With some yellow rock candy," she added, "and syllabubs."
XVI
He returned to Myrtle Forge from New York with a mingled sense of
pleasure and the feeling that his place was unsupportably empty. The
loneliness of which he had been increasingly conscious seemed to have
its focus in his house. The following morning he walked restlessly down
the short, steep descent to the Forge, lying on its swift water diverted
from Canary Creek. Unlike a great many iron families of increasing
prosperity, the Pennys had not erected the unsightly buildings of their
manufacturing about the scene of their initial activity and mansion.
Jasper's father, Daniel Barnes Penny, under whose hand their success had
largely multiplied, had grouped their first rolling mill and small nail
works by the canal at Jaffa, preserving the pastoral aspect of Myrtle
Forge, with its farmland and small, ancient, stone buildings.
Jasper had only made some unimportant changes at the Forge itself--the
pigs were subjected to the working of two hearths now, the chafery,
where the greater part of the sulphur was burned out, and the finery.
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