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 grew more indulgent as this novel distinction dawned on him.  “Why, I guess that’s the whole trouble with Ralph.  Nobody expects to make money in a profession; and if you’ve taught him to regard the law that way, he’d better go right into cooking-stoves and done with it.”