Half a scuttle of coals poured on.
“No, no. No more coals, Rasp.”
“They’re on now, Mr Pug,” said Rasp, with a grim grin. “You know how the governor grumbles if the fire’s out, and it’s me as ketches it.”
“The office is insufferably hot now.”
“Good job, too; for it’s cold enough outside, I can tell you; and there’s a draught where I sits just as if you’d got yer ear up again the escape-valve of the air-pump.”
“Get a screen, then,” said the first speaker, impatiently, as he scratched his thick, curly, crisp brown hair with the point of a pair of compasses, and gazed intently at a piece of drawing-paper pinned out upon the desk before him.
“Screen? Bah! What do I want wi’ screens? I can stand wind and cold, and a bit o’ fire, too, for the matter o’ that. I ain’t like some people.”
“Hang it all, Rasp, I wish you’d go,” said the first speaker. “You see how busy I am. What’s the matter with you this morning? Really, you’re about the most disagreeable old man I ever knew.”
“Disagreeable? Old?” cried Rasp, seizing the poker, and inserting it in the bars for another good stoke at the office fire, when the compasses were banged down on the desk, their owner leaped off the stool, twisted the poker out of the stoker’s hand, and laughingly threw it down on the fender.
“I’ll get Mr Parkley to find you a post somewhere as fireman at a furnace,” said the first speaker, laughing.