Billy’s blue eyes, large from seeing the key, grew still larger, so that, when Mr. Prescott finally looked up, he saw quite a different boy from the Billy whom he had left only the day before.
“Well, William,” he said, as he put down his pen, “having obeyed to the letter—I might say to the period—my injunction to keep your lips shut, suppose you open them.”
Billy’s tongue seemed to be fastened to the roof of his mouth tighter than his feet were to the floor, and he couldn’t seem to unfasten it.
“Perhaps,” continued Mr. Prescott, “it might be as well, just at this point, for me to inform you that surprise is one of the persistent elements of business. I met another telegram, so you meet me. What has happened?”
When Billy finally reached the desk and began to tell him about the key, Mr. Prescott whirled around in his chair and put his right thumb into the right armhole of his vest.
Before Billy had finished, though his tongue, having started, went very fast, Mr. Prescott put his other thumb in his other armhole, and leaned back in his chair till his shoulders seemed almost to fill the space between the desk and the railing.
“Well,” he said, when Billy had finished, “as you are the one in possession of the original facts, what do you think had better be done?”
If Mr. Prescott had only known it, Billy didn’t like him very well when he talked that way. But of course nobody can like anybody every minute of the time; for even a best hero is more than likely to have disagreeable spots. Billy’s father had told him that, and Billy was very much like his father in the way he had of forgetting disagreeables pretty soon after they happened. Just that minute, anyway, his whole mind was on that great iron key.
Besides, when Mr. Prescott talked that way, he always hit the man-side of Billy. Possibly Mr. Prescott knew that.
“I think, sir,” answered Billy, almost before he knew what he was saying, “that I can get the key.”