The cashier jumped on all his springs into a sudden activity of deference.
Presently the manager emerged from the glazed door of his room, pulling his long whiskers.
“Oh, Mr Lovatt,” Edwin began nervously. “Father’s just come along—”
They were swallowed up into the manager’s parlour. It might have been a court of justice, or a dentist’s surgery, or the cabinet of an insurance doctor, or the room at Fontainebleau where Napoleon signed his abdication—anything but the thing it was. Happily Mr Lovatt had a manner which never varied; he had only one manner for all men and all occasions. So that Edwin was not distressed either by the deficiencies of amateur acting or by the exhibition of another’s self-conscious awkwardness. Nevertheless when his father took the pen to write he was obliged to look studiously at the window and inaudibly hum an air. Had he not done so, that threatening sob might have burst its way out of him.
Four.
“I’m going this road,” said Darius, when they were safely out of the Bank, pointing towards the Sytch.
“What for?”
“I’m going this road,” he repeated, gloomily obstinate.
“All right,” said Edwin cheerfully. “I’ll trot round with you.”