They shook hands once more, a queer but very human proceeding in those overwrought moments.
“Just you walk to the office this morning,” Jacob said, “with your head in the air, and keep on telling yourself there’s no mistake about it. You’re going home to-night with a hundred pounds in bank notes in your pocket, with a bottle of wine under one arm, and a brown paper parcel as big as you can carry under the other. You’re out of the wood, young fellow, and you be thankful for the rest of your life that you found the way to smile one morning. So long till one o’clock at Simpson’s,” he added, as they stepped out on to the platform. “Hi, taxi!”
Mr. Bultiwell came hurrying along, with a good deal less than his usual dignity. He was not one of those men who were intended by nature to proceed at any other than a leisurely pace.
“Pratt,” he called out, “wait a minute. We’ll share that taxi, eh?”
Jacob glanced over his shoulder.
“Sorry,” he answered, “I’m not going your way.”
Soon after the opening of that august establishment, Jacob, not without some trepidation, visited the Bank of England. At half-past ten, he strolled into the warehouse of Messrs. Smith and Joyce, leather merchants, Bermondsey Street, the firm for which he had been working during the last two years. Mr. Smith frowned at him from behind a stack of leather.
“You’re late this morning, Pratt,” he growled. “I thought perhaps you had gone over to see that man at Tottenham.”
“The man at Tottenham,” Jacob remarked equably, “can go to hell.”