‘Rather a good job to begin with—eh, Mark?’ whispered Martin nudging him with his elbow.
Mark, who, with a very stolid countenance had been eyeing the plan and the agent by turns, merely rejoined ‘Uncommon!’
A dead silence ensued, Mr Scadder in some short recesses or vacations of his toothpick, whistled a few bars of Yankee Doodle, and blew the dust off the roof of the Theatre.
‘I suppose,’ said Martin, feigning to look more narrowly at the plan, but showing by his tremulous voice how much depended, in his mind, upon the answer; ‘I suppose there are—several architects there?’
‘There ain’t a single one,’ said Scadder.
‘Mark,’ whispered Martin, pulling him by the sleeve, ‘do you hear that? But whose work is all this before us, then?’ he asked aloud.
‘The soil being very fruitful, public buildings grows spontaneous, perhaps,’ said Mark.
He was on the agent’s dark side as he said it; but Scadder instantly changed his place, and brought his active eye to bear upon him.
‘Feel of my hands, young man,’ he said.
‘What for?’ asked Mark, declining.