actually surprised Miss Cordsen into an impropriety, in which he seldom
succeeded; and his father, who was generally undemonstrative, had
greeted him with more than usual warmth.

The young Consul, as he was generally called from the time when his
father, the old Consul, was alive, was not so tall as his younger
brother, and while the latter had grown stouter in the course of years,
the former seemed to have got thinner and smaller. His hair was smooth,
thin, and slightly grey, carefully brushed so as to make the most of it.
His eyes were keen, and of a light blue colour; and his lower jaw was
somewhat prominent. Smoothly shaved and well brushed, with stiff white
neckcloth, shining boots, and silver-headed cane, there was something
about his whole appearance which told of prosperity. Every word, every
movement, even the peculiarly characteristic one with which he adjusted
his chin in his stiff neckcloth, was the picture of propriety and
precision. Precision was, in fact, a word which seemed made for the
young Consul; both his appearance and his career reflected it to the
uttermost fibre.

With his extensive business and large fortune, Consul Garman had also
inherited a boundless admiration and respect for his father, Morten W.
Garman, the old Consul, who had come into the property of Sandsgaard at
a time when it was of little value, and considerably encumbered by
debts, and when the business itself was in rather a confused condition.
In order to keep the business afloat during the disastrous years of the
war, Morten W. Garman took into partnership a rich old skipper, by name
Jacob Worse, from whence sprang the name of the firm. Thanks to old
Worse's money, life came again into the tottering business, and Garman's
great ability made the firm, in a few years, one of the most important
on the west coast. But when old Worse died, and his son took his place