“Yes, sir,” I answered. “It will be my eighteenth birthday in the autumn.”
“And do you desire to celebrate that event with us, or elsewhere, Mr. Corkey?” he inquired.
I told him that I greatly hoped to celebrate it with him—at least, with the Country Department of the Apollo; and I breathed again in secret, for this showed that I was not going to be dismissed.
Indeed, Mr. Blades had told me that a man was always cautioned once.
“They never fire you the first time,” was his forcible expression.
But the revulsion of feeling caused by knowing that I was saved made me strike rather too joyful a note with Mr. Trott.
“I’m very sorry indeed that Mr. Westonshaugh had to report me, sir,” I said, in a hearty sort of voice. “It was well deserved, and I promise you it shan’t occur again.”
But the Secretary didn’t seem to want my views. In fact, he held up his hand for silence.
“You are here to listen, Mr. Corkey,” he replied. “Now, before me I have some of your recent work. Will you kindly consider these pages in an impartial spirit, and tell me what you think of them? I invite your opinion.”
As bad luck would have it, before him were some registers of policies that I had done under very unusual pressure. In fact, I had made a bet with a chap called Mason that I would register twenty “short period” policies quicker than he would register twenty of the same. My friend, Dicky Travers, held the stakes, which amounted to a shilling a side, and I won by one “short period” policy in record time.