“Seventeen, Somerset—” gasped Mr. Tridge and Mr. Clark, simultaneously.
“That’s it.”
“Then I can tell you where you got it!” shouted Mr. Tridge. “You come and see me and Sam Clark there many a time while we was lodging there, when the old ‘Jane Gladys’ was being repaired that time.”
“Ah, of course, I remember now!” said Mr. Lock. “A nice, comfortable, homely place it was, too!”
“And you’ve sent Sinnett there to start questioning and arguing and hexplaining?” roared Mr. Tridge. “Why, Sam and me ran up a bill for the ’ole six weeks we stopped there, and then we skipped off without paying. And now—”
EPISODE X
THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM
That rising man of affairs, Mr. Horace Dobb, was setting out on his afternoon stroll—which is relatively equivalent to saying that Beau Nash had just appeared in the Pump Room at Bath, or that the Prince Regent had issued forth to sun himself on the Steine at Brighthelmstone.
For, whatever drab limitations the keeping of a second-hand shop might impose upon Mr. Dobb’s wardrobe during the exigencies of the morning, the afternoon would almost invariably have the gratification of witnessing that gentleman’s apotheosis. Then Mr. Dobb who spent his mornings in dragging bulky things about in the remote dustiness of his outhouse, or in cajoling and brow-beating clients across the counter, was as different from the Mr. Dobb of the afternoon as is the lowly grub from the full-winged butterfly.
Mr. Dobb, because he deemed that he owed a fitting publicity to his occupation and to his own personality, had taken the hours which intervene between dinner and tea, and had incorporated them into a general scheme for his glorification. Other business men might permit the searching post-meridian sunshine to illuminate frayed cuffs and shiny elbows, to exhibit symptoms of haste and heedlessness upon waistcoat fronts, to reveal circumstantial evidence with regard to linen collars. Such negligence of apparel had ceased to be any part of Mr. Dobb’s policy.
Wherever the calls of his profession might lead him abroad after dinner, either to auction sales or to visits for private appraisement, to interviews for preliminary negotiation or merely to casual scoutings for opportunities of profit, Mr. Dobb’s aim was to appear fresh and impeccably groomed and, as far as possible, aristocratic. Careful study of toilet and deportment, he was convinced, must inevitably bring him the pleasing reputation of being a leader of fashion, and, furthermore, could not but impress people with the desirability of dealing with so distinguished a person when they had rickety sofas and deficient clocks and old ironmongery to sell.