Eustace turned them over, and while he did so, his happy wife stood by him, marvelling at the kaleidoscopic changes in her circumstances. When last she had stood in that office, not a year ago, it had been as a pitiful suppliant begging for a few pounds wherewith to try and save her sister’s life, and now—
Suddenly Eustace stopped turning, and drawing a document from the bundle, glanced at it. It was Augusta’s agreement with Meeson and Co. for “Jemima’s Vow,” the agreement binding her to them for five years which had been the cause of all her troubles, and, as she firmly believed, of her little sister’s death.
“There, my dear,” said Eustace to his wife, “there is a present for you. Take it!”
Augusta took the document, and having looked to see what it was, shivered as she did so. It brought the whole thing back so painfully to her mind.
“What shall I do with it,” she asked; “tear it up?”
“Yes,” he answered. “No, stop a bit,” and taking it from her he wrote “cancelled” in big letters across it, signed and dated it.
“There,” he said, “now send it to be framed and glazed, and it shall be hung here in the office, to show how they used to do business at Meeson’s.”
No. 1 snorted, and looked at Eustace aghast. What would the young man be after next?
“Are the gentlemen assembled in the hall?” asked Eustace of him when the remaining documents were put away again.
No. 1 said that they were, and accordingly, to the hall they went, wherein were gathered all the editors, sub-editors, managers, sub-managers of the various departments, clerks, and other employees, not forgetting the tame authors, who, a pale and mealy regiment, had been marched up thither from the Hutches, and the tame artists with flying hair—and were now being marshalled in lines by No. 1, who had gone on before. When Eustace and his wife and John Short got to the top of the hall, where some chairs had been set, the whole multitude bowed, whereon he begged them to be seated—a permission of which the tame authors, who sat all day in their little wooden hutches, and sometimes a good part of the night also, did not seem to care to avail themselves of. But the tame artists, who had, for the most part, to work standing, sat down readily.