"Not bad—not bad at all. Nice figure—trifle over slender in the upper works, perhaps; looks a bit worried at times; finds it hard to make ends meet, perhaps, poor thing. H'm. But she's a good worker, and that's a fact. Yes, I think this arrangement was a good idea."
Garner came in with the cash-box. "We've shut up outside, Mr. Holm. Was there anything more you wanted this evening?"
"No—no thanks. H'm, I say, that row and goings on upstairs, can you hear it out in the shop?"
"About the same as in here. But it's really beautiful music, Mr. Holm. I slipped out into the passage upstairs a little while back, and they were singing a quartette, but Miss Marie was taking the bass, and going so hard I'm sure they could hear her right up at the fire station."
"I've no doubt they could, Garner. But I'll give them music of another sort, and then—we'll see!" He flung the cash-box into the safe with a clang, and Garner judged it best to disappear without delay.
Outside in the shop he confided to Clasen that the old man was in a roaring paddy about the music upstairs; and the pair of them fell to speculating as to what would happen when he came up.
"Oh, nothing," said Clasen. "Those youngsters they always manage to get round him in the end."
"Might get sick of the whole business and give up the shop—or make it over to us, what?" added Garner, "as his successors," and he waxed enthusiastic over the idea as they strolled along to Syversen's Hotel for a little extra in the way of supper.
Holm was walking up and down by himself in the office, while the music upstairs went on, until the globe on the safe rattled with the sound. He was in a thoroughly bad temper for once. "There! Just as everything was going nicely—and a balance-sheet worth framing! Ha-ha! and only the other day that miserable worm of a bank manager, Hermansen, wouldn't take my paper for £400. Lord, but I'd like to show that fellow one day; make him understand he was a trifle out in his reckoning with the firm of Knut G. Holm. Do a neat little deal to the tune of a few thousand, cash down—something to make him scratch his silly pate. I can just imagine him saying to himself: 'Remarkable man that Knut Holm. Never really had much faith in him before, but now....' Yes, that's what he said a few years back, I remember; hadn't much faith in the business. Well, I must say, things were looking pretty bad at that time. But I'd always reckoned on William's coming into the business; new style, Holm and Son. And now there's an end of all that. No, it doesn't pay to go building castles in the air; it's just card houses that come tumbling down with a crash. Here have I been toiling and moiling all these years, morning till night, building up the business step by step to what it is now. Had to knuckle to that swine of a Hermansen ugh—ugrh—isch! Lying awake at night trying to work out some way of getting over to-morrow, with the bills falling due—and now there's that pack of wastrels sitting up there. 'Poor old man'—that's their style—'quite a decent old chap in many ways, no doubt, but no idea of culture, no sense of lofty ideals; spent his life standing behind a counter and that's about all he's fit for.' Oh, I know the tune when they get on that topic! I've marked it often enough when I'm with them and their precious friends. They'll eat and drink at my expense, and then slap me on the shoulder in their superior way, thinking all the time I'm just an old drudge of a cab horse, and lucky to have the chance of encouraging real Art! Oh, I'll talk to them! It'll be a real treat to give them a proper lesson for once. They shall have it this evening. So on, old boy!"
When Holm walked into the big drawing-room upstairs he was greeted with acclamation. "Hurrah for Mæcenas! hurrah for the patron of Art! Hurrah!"