"Who gave you this?" asked the clerk.
"Justice Burns, it's for thirty pounds; you see my uncle, he left me a legacy, and—"
The man of business cut the speech of the countryman short.
"This cheque is of no use," he said, pushing it back towards John, "there is no signature on it."
Carey stared in blank amazement, first at the speaker, then at the cheque. What the clerk had said was true enough; the gouty Justice in drawing out the cheque had forgotten to sign his name.
John rubbed his heated forehead, and looked perplexed. "What's to be done?" said he.
"You must take back the cheque and get it signed, of course," said the clerk; "as it is, it is of no more use than blank paper." And having thus summarily dismissed the business, the clerk turned away to attend to a gentleman who had just entered the office.
"This ben't the First of April, or I should have thought the Justice had chosen to play me a trick," thought John, as, somewhat mortified and provoked, he replaced the cheque in his pocket-book, and then quitted the bank.
"He'd no right to send me on such a fool's errand as this because he'd a twinge in his gouty foot. I'll tell him my mind when I see him to-morrow. I'll just go and refresh myself now a bit; for an hour of walking about this Babel takes more out of a fellow than a day spent in hedging and ditching. I'll buy the few things I want, and then get home as fast as my legs will carry me. I shall be ashamed to tell Dick Brace that I've lost a day's work, and had a twenty miles' walk for my pains; 'twill always be a-coming up as a joke against me."