II
When he reached the shop, he sat down at his old desk in the black-stained cubicle, and spied forth and around for the alleged dust which he would tolerate in business but would not tolerate at home. It was there. He could see places that had obviously not been touched for weeks, withdrawn places where the undisturbed mounds of stock and litter had the eternal character of Roman remains or vestiges of creation. The senior errand-boy was in the shop, snuffling over a blue-paper parcel.
"Boy," said Edwin. "What time do you come here in the morning?"
"'A' past seven, sir."
"Well, on Monday morning you'll be here at seven and you'll move everything--there and there and there--and sweep and dust properly. This shop's like a pigstye. I believe you never dust anything but the counters."
He was mild but firm. He knew himself for a just man; yet the fact that he was robbing this boy of half-an-hour's sleep and probably the boy's mother also, and upsetting the ancient order of the boy's household, did not trouble him, did not even occur to him. For him the boy had no mother and no household, but was a patent self-causing boy that came miraculously into existence on the shop doorstep every morning and achieved annihilation thereon every night.
The boy was a fatalist, but his fatalism had limits, because he well knew that the demand for errand-boys was greater than the supply. Though the limits of his fatalism had not yet been reached, he was scarcely pleased.
"If I come at seven who'll gi' me th' kays, sir?" he demanded rather surlily, wiping his nose on his sleeve.
"I'll see that you have the keys," said Edwin, with divine assurance, though he had not thought of the difficulty of the keys.
The boy left the shop, his body thrown out of the perpendicular by the weight of the blue-paper parcel.