This was the most explicit word that had yet fallen from Mr. Errington on the subject of his subordinate's promotion. And it decidedly gratified Mr. Obadiah Gibbs. Nevertheless, that steady individual was not so elated by the prospect held out to him as to dismiss from his mind the business he had come to speak about. "It is the most unaccountable thing!" said he. "Three or four cases of the kind within two months! And up to that time no office in the kingdom bore a better character than Whitford. I hope the thing may be cleared up. But it is next to impossible to trace a stolen letter. The Duckwell man—Heath, his name is; Roger Heath—says he is determined to complain to the Postmaster-General. I suppose we shall be having the surveyor coming to look after us. You see, it isn't like a solitary case. That's the worst of it. There's what you may term an accumulation, sir."
Whilst Mr. Gibbs poured forth his troubled mind in these and many more slow sentences, Algernon rose, took his hat, brushed it lightly with his glove, put it on, and was evidently about to depart. Gibbs ventured to lay his hand on his coat-sleeve to detain him. The clerk was not satisfied that the matter should be dismissed so lightly. It might not be possible to do anything, truly; but (in common with a great many other people) Mr. Obadiah Gibbs felt that, where efficacious action was impracticable, it was all the more desirable to mark the gravity of an unpleasant circumstance by copious talking of it. Life would become, in some sort, too frivolous and easy if, when a matter clearly could not be remedied, every one agreed to say no more about it! A vast deal of sage eloquence would thus be choked and dammed up. And Mr. Gibbs, for his special part, was conscious of having some reputation amongst his fellow Wesleyans for a gift of utterance.
"I really don't know, sir, what to say to Roger Heath," he persisted.
"Oh—tell him inquiries will be made in the proper quarters."
"That, sir, has been said already. He has been here twice or thrice."
"Then tell him to go to the devil!" said Algernon, sharply jerking his arm away from the clerk's grasp, and walking off.
The pious and respectable Mr. Gibbs shook his head disapprovingly at this profane speech, and went back to his stool in the outer office with a lowering brow.
Algernon walked along the High Street, and turned down a narrow lane leading towards the river, and past one corner of the Grammar School. The boys were just coming out of school with the usual shrill babble and rush. A party of Dr. Bodkin's private scholars were on their way to Whit Meadow.
"Good day, Ingleby," said Algernon, addressing the eldest of them, the same lad who had been Rhoda's squire in the tea-room on the night of Mrs. Algernon Errington's début in Whitford society. "Where are you off to?"
"We're going to have a row. I've got a boat, and we're going up the river as far as Duckwell Reach. We have leave from the doctor. Deuce of a job to get it, though!"