CHAPTER X
Luke knocked at the door of Mr. Diggle’s room, and entered.
“I’m back,” he said. “Been lunching with a man. Can I have a partnership?”
“Not to-day, Mr. Sharper,” said Diggle. “You should be more reasonable. The whole office is more or less disorganized by the spring-cleaning. It seems to me that you try to make more trouble. You go out a great deal for a business man.”
“I have to. Things for my wife, you know. Soft glass and paper soap. Things of that kind.”
“I don’t wish to hear about it. They will not be actually beginning on your room till Monday. It may be in some slight disorder, but that need not prevent you from going back there and getting on with your work. You have to write that full-page advertisement for the ‘Church Times,’ you remember.”
He went on to his own room. He picked up the little booklets from the floor, dusted each one carefully, and wrapped it in white paper. As he was finishing the last a letter was brought in to him. The messenger was waiting for an answer. It was in Jona’s handwriting.
“Darling Lukie,” she wrote, “I can bear it no more. Take me away, please. Shall I come along to your office, or will you call for the goods? Jona.”