Meantime, Wick, who now had a room in a little blind alley off Fleet Street, was toiling upstairs thoroughly tired in every sense. He had expected Miss Perkins to effect a quicker revolution than she had been able to do. He was overworked, for the great man who had taken him in hand was testing him at every point, and things were not being made easy for him; that was not the great man's way. He had, moreover, to contend with the very natural jealousy of a good many men at the office, over whose resentful heads he had been promoted, and their protests were none the less bitter because they were forced to be silent ones. Criticism of the Chief's plans, or even whims, were not tolerated in Fleet Street. Wick found his work hampered and retarded in every possible way, but he was too clever to speak a word of protest during his rare but fruitful interviews with the "Boss," whose eyes twinkled as he asked him each time that they met: "Well, Mr. Wick, things going well, I hope?" And Wick, knowing that he knew (for he knew everything), that things were being made damnably hard for him, invariably answered with a corresponding twinkle and a pugnacious tightening of the lips: "Top-hole." But now, after this second evening he had spent at "Happy House" since his return from Paris, he was worn out and discouraged, and he sat down on the edge of his bed, the moonlight pouring in through the uncurtained window, and allowed his face to drop and line without restraint.
"I'll go and see mother to-morrow," he said aloud, "and tell her all about it. She'll set me right, if I'm settable. The only decent thing in the whole world is that Mrs. Walbridge is having the time of her life in Paris, bless her! What a stupid letter!" He took a letter from his pocket and tossed it on to the dressing-table. "I wonder what they would say if they could read mine! Ah, well."
As he got into bed and blew out his candle, he groaned heavily. "Damn Miss Perkins," he said.
[CHAPTER XXII]
One day in early May Sir John Barclay, who had been lunching at "Happy House," managed to slip as he went down the steps into the garden and tore the tendons away from one of his ankles. Grisel telephoned for the doctor, who bound it up and gave Sir John, who was suffering acute pain, a quietening draught of some kind, and went away leaving Grisel and her lover in the dismal drawing-room alone together.
"Did it hurt much?" she asked anxiously.
He nodded, "Yes, ridiculously. It is odd how a little injury like that can hurt so much more than a good many serious ones." After a moment he added, looking thoughtfully at her as she moved about setting the room to rights, "It is exactly the same with mental pain, too, my dear. Ever noticed that?"
"What do you mean?" She turned at the door, grasping the basin of cold water in which the bandages had been wetted.