Question

The ledger books of Hallowell & Sons were, to Mr. Abernathy, a sacred chronicle of human endeavor. He entered each shipment of whale oil and Baltic timber with a calligraphic precision that bordered on devotions, believing that to record a transaction was to rescue it from the messy oblivion of time. To his colleague, Mr. Thorne, however, the office was merely a temporary harbor, a draughty room where one sold hours for pence. While Abernathy labored under the green shade of his lamp, his spine curved like a question mark over the parchment, Thorne stood by the rain-streaked window, tossing copper coins into the muddy alley below. 'Why fret over the ink-wells, Abernathy?' Thorne would drawl, his eyes tracking the descent of a far-off schooner. 'In fifty years, the damp will have eaten these pages, and the rats will have nested in your neat columns. The sea takes the ships, and the earth takes the merchants, and we are but dust writing about dust.' Abernathy did not look up, but his pen pressed harder against the page, the metal nib scraping a sharp protest. 'If we are dust, Thorne,' Abernathy whispered, 'then let us at least be dust that kept its accounts straight. It is the only defiance we have.'

In the passage, how does Mr. Thorne’s skeptical attitude toward the ledgers function as a foil to Mr. Abernathy’s character?