“Now! what’s all this?” said Mr Grimstone, bustling up with Jem Smith.
“Please, sir,” said the latter, “I telled him as he was to—”
“I found the boy unable to do what was set him, Mr Grimstone,” said my protector quietly, “and told him to go on with learning his case. The boy has never been in an office before.”
“That was for me to know, Mr Hallett,” cried the overseer, growing red in the face. “What the devil do you mean by—”
“Interfering, Mr Grimstone? I did it because I was sure you were too good a manager to wish time to be wasted in this large office. And—I must ask you, please when you speak to me, to omit these coarse expressions.”
“Of all the insolence—”
“Insolent or not, sir,” said the dark man sternly, “have the goodness to remember that I always treat you with respect, and I expect the same from you. Excuse me, but a quarrel between us will not improve your position with the men.”
Mr Grimstone looked at him furiously; and turning redder in the face than ever, seemed about to burst into a tirade of angry language, but my protector met his look in a way that quelled him, and turning upon the fat-headed boy, who was looking on open-mouthed, the overseer gave him a sounding box on the ear.
“What are you standing gaping there for, you lazy young scoundrel?” he roared; “go and wash those galleys, and do them well.”
Then, striding off, he went into his glass case, while Jem Smith, in a compartment at the end of an avenue of cases, began to brush some long lengths of type, and whenever I glanced at him, he shook his fist, as he showed his inflamed eyes red with crying and his face blackened by contact with his dirty hands.