I found that I was belated and hurried back to my desk. Alas! poor
lovers; I wonder if they are watching still? Has he fallen exhausted
from the post into the water? Is that handkerchief, bleached and rent,
still pendant upon that somewhat baggy umbrella?

"Youth and beauty went to Europe to-day," said I to Prue, as I stirred
my tea at evening. As I spoke, our youngest daughter brought me the
sugar. She is just eighteen, and her name should be Hebe. I took a
lump of sugar and looked at her. She had never seemed so lovely, and
as I dropped the lump in my cup, I kissed her. I glanced at Prue as I
did so. The dear woman smiled, but did not answer my exclamation.

Thus, without travelling, I travel, and share the emotions of those I
do not know. But sometimes the old longing comes over me as in the
days when I timidly touched the huge East Indiaman, and magnetically
sailed around the world.

It was but a few days after the lovers and I waved farewell to the
steamer, and while the lovely figures standing under the great
gonfalon were as vivid in my mind as ever, that a day of premature
sunny sadness, like those of the Indian summer, drew me away from the
office early in the afternoon: for fortunately it is our dull season
now, and even Titbottom sometimes leaves the office by five o'clock.
Although why he should leave it, or where he goes, or what he does, I
do not well know. Before I knew him, I used sometimes to meet him with
a man whom I was afterwards told was Bartleby, the scrivener. Even
then it seemed to me that they rather clubbed their loneliness than
made society for each other. Recently I have not seen Bartleby; but
Titbottom seems no more solitary because he is alone.