The offices of Fairbrother and Co. were in the full swing of business when George Early sauntered in and took his accustomed place at a small desk.
"What time do you call this?" asked the head clerk severely, looking up from a ledger.
George looked at his watch.
"Half-past eight," he said intelligently; "that makes me half an hour late, doesn't it? Matter of fact, old chap, I——"
"That'll do," said the head clerk; "just you keep your place. And keep your time, too," he added warningly, "or else there'll be a vacancy in this office."
He marched off with a ledger under his arm, and George, with a wink at his nearest colleague, pulled a morning paper from an inner pocket and consulted the sporting column.
Fairbrothers' was an easy-going firm, that had the reputation of being good to its employees. If a man once got a seat on an office-stool there he was considered to have a berth for life, supposing of course that the iron trade and Upper Thames Street continued to exist. Fairbrothers' never dismissed a man unless he was a downright rogue, and in such a case it was believed that they secretly looked after him if he happened to be in a very bad way.
Nobody in the office minded much what was said unless Old Joe Fairbrother, the venerable head of the concern, happened to say it. If there was a threat of dismissal from anybody else the threatened man affected contrition and laughed up his sleeve. And although this general air of safety was as soothing to Thomas Parrott, the head clerk, as to anybody else, that admirable man's sense of duty compelled him to occasionally sound a warning note to his subordinates.
This morning the head clerk was in a bad temper, and found fault with everybody, especially with George Early.