CHAPTER XXVIII
THE FIRST GLEAM
At the office, which to my experience seemed to belong to a previous existence, but to my eyes seemed only of yesterday, every familiar object was in its place and unchanged. The first of these was the figure of Mr. Dundonald. He confronted us just outside the door of the Principal’s office, and after a bow to me which a week ago would have made me long to shriek with amusement, came forward with his most affairé manner and said something, gravely and in a low voice, to his chief.
“I know. Can’t attend to it now. Presently!” the Governor put him aside, but also seriously. “When Mr. Albert Waters comes in; I’ve ’phoned him. Send the boy to me when I ring.”
Then he opened the door of his room.
Here, too, all looked exactly as it had done that afternoon four months and an eternity ago! The light and spaciousness of it, the mile-walk stretch of deep red carpet, the round-topped mahogany clock on the wide mantelshelf, that big desk, bare but for the turnover date ticket upon it, his revolving chair in front of it, and that other plump green-morocco-covered arm-chair that he had first pointed at, that afternoon, for me to take.
He pointed to it now.
“Sit down, please.”
Down I sat, watching him as he turned to the desk. He was writing rapidly telegraph-forms. Then his hand went out to the well-known row of electric bell-pushes on his desk. One thing there, after all, was new: the extending bracket-telephone. Ah, yes; he’d put that in his letter....
The equally well-known sharp little Cockney face of Harold appeared at the door; the boy came up and took the forms, which the Governor had gathered into two bundles.
“These to go off at once. These to be coded.”