“Master Edwin,” said Mrs Nixon, who was rubbing the balustrade of the stairs, “you munna’ cross him like that.” She jerked her head in the direction of the garden. The garden door stood open.
If he had not felt solemn and superior, he could have snapped off that head of hers.
“Is my breakfast ready?” he asked. He hung up his hat, and absently took the little parcel which he had left on the marble ledge of the umbrella-stand.
Volume Three--Chapter Seven.
Laid Aside.
The safe, since the abandonment of the business premises by the family, had stood in a corner of a small nondescript room, sometimes vaguely called the safe-room, between the shop and what had once been the kitchen. It was a considerable safe, and it had the room practically to itself. As Edwin unlocked it, and the prodigious door swung with silent smoothness to his pull, he was aware of a very romantic feeling of exploration. He had seen the inside of the safe before; he had even opened the safe, and taken something from it, under his father’s orders. But he had never had leisure, nor licence, to inspect its interior. From his boyhood had survived the notion that it must contain many marvels. In spite of himself his attitude was one of awe.
The first thing that met his eye was his father’s large, black-bound private cash-book, which constituted the most sacred and mysterious document in the accountancy of the business. Edwin handled, and kept, all the books save that. At the beginning of the previous week he and Stifford had achieved the task of sending out the quarterly accounts, and of one sort or another there were some seven hundred quarterly accounts. Edwin was familiar with every detail of the printer’s work-book, the daybook, the combined book colloquially called ‘invoice and ledger,’ the ‘bought’ ledger, and the shop cash-book. But he could form no sure idea of the total dimensions and results of the business, because his father always kept the ultimate castings to himself, and never displayed his private cash-book under any circumstances. By ingenuity and perseverance Edwin might have triumphed over Darius’s mania for secrecy; but he did not care to do so; perhaps pride even more than honour caused him to refrain.
Now he held the book, and saw that only a portion of it was in the nature of a cash-book; the rest comprised summaries and general statements. The statement for the year 1885, so far as he could hastily decipher its meaning, showed a profit of 821 pounds. He was not surprised, and yet the sight of the figures in his father’s heavy, scratchy hand was curiously impressive.