"Good day, sir!" he said. "I trust that you will find a residence to suit you."
Mr. Lynn strolled off with a puzzled frown upon his forehead, and
Alfred Burton, with a slight gesture of aversion, pushed open the
swinging doors which led into the offices of Messrs. Waddington &
Forbes.
CHAPTER II
A TRANSFORMATION
Burton stood for a moment upon the threshold of the office, looking around him. A new and peculiar distaste for these familiar surroundings seemed suddenly to have sprung into life. For the first time he realized the intense ugliness of this scene of his daily labors. The long desk, ink-splashed and decrepit, was covered with untidy piles of papers, some of them thick with dust; the walls were hung with seedy-looking files and an array of tattered bills; there were cobwebs in every corner, gaps in the linoleum floor-covering. In front of the office-boy—a youth about fourteen years of age, who represented the remaining clerical staff of the establishment—were pinned up several illustrations cut out from Comic Cuts, the Police News, and various other publications of a similar order. As Burton looked around him, his distaste grew. It seemed impossible that he had ever existed for an hour amid such an environment. The prospect of the future was suddenly hugely distasteful.
Very slowly he changed his coat and climbed on to his worn horsehair stool, without exchanging his usual facetious badinage with the remaining member of the staff. The office-boy, who had thought of something good to say, rather resented his silence. It forced him into taking the initiative, a position which placed him from the first at a disadvantage.
"Any luck with the Yank, Mr. Burton?" he inquired, with anxious civility.
Burton shook his head.
"None at all," he confessed. "He wouldn't have anything to do with the house."
"Has any one been letting on to him about it, do you think?"