"There's no use in going round such a way," said Mr. Stopper. "Mr. Boxall's not in; you can go through his room. Here's the key of the door. Only mind you lock it when you come back."
The key used to lie in Mr. Boxall's drawer, but now Mr. Stopper took it from his own. Thomas was not altogether pleased at the change of approach, though why, he would hardly have been able to tell. Probably he felt something as a miser would feel, into whose treasure-cave the new gallery of a neighboring mine threatened to break. He was, as it were, exposed upon the flank. Annoyance instantly clouded the expression of eagerness which he had not been able to conceal; and neither the light nor the following cloud escaped Mr. Stopper, who, although the region of other men's thoughts was dark as pitch to him in the usual relation he bore to them, yet the moment his interests or—rare case—his feelings brought him into the contact of opposition with any man, all the man's pregnable points lay bare before him.
Thomas had nothing to do but take the key and go. He had now no opportunity of spending more than one moment with Lucy. When the distance was of some length, he could cut both ways, and pocket the time gained; now there was nothing to save upon. Nevertheless, he sped up the stairs as if he would overtake old Time himself.
Rendered prudent, or cunning, by his affections, he secured the ordered chaos of vellum before he knocked at Mrs. Boxall's door, which he then opened without waiting for the response to his appeal.
"Lucy! Lucy!" he said; "I have but one half minute, and hardly that."
Lucy appeared with the rim of a rainy sunset about her eyes. The rest of her face was still as a day that belonged to not one of the four seasons—that had nothing to do.
"If you have forgotten yesterday, Thomas, I have not," she said.
"Oh! never mind yesterday," he said. "I'm coming in to-night; and I can stay as long as I please. My father and mother are gone to Folkestone, and there's nobody to know when I go home. Isn't it jolly?"
And without waiting for an answer, he scudded like Poppie. But what in Poppie might be graceful, was not dignified in Thomas; and I fear Lucy felt this, when he turned the corner to the stair-case with the huge ledger under his arm, and his coat flying out behind him. But she would not have felt it had she not had on the preceding evening, for the first time, a peep into his character.
As he reëntered the counting-house he was aware of the keen glance cast at him by Stopper, and felt that he reddened. But he laid the ledger on the desk before him, and perched again with as much indifference as he could assume.