“No place would have been good enough for you, Gomme.... You should have been promoted long ago....” He roused and faced the position boldly: “But you have been such a good friend to me and to the boy—so useful a part of this office, that I am afraid I have treated you like a part of myself, and have come by habit to think the hat that covered my head covered yours.... Dame Fortune has knocked the hat off—and I find there were two heads inside it.”
“Well, sir, we can look her in the face without the hat.”
“Yes, yes, Gomme—but I have looked over your head.”
“It has saved your eyes from the commonplace, sir, and my heart from a bad chill. I wouldn’t have missed the past years in this office for a fortune.”
“No, no, Gomme; nor I—nor I.”
“They have made a man of me,” the youth added hoarsely.
Baddlesmere put his hand on the other’s shoulder:
“But you should have been promoted—you should have been promoted.... And I could so easily have sent you to a better billet.” He sat down, and, fidgeting with the paper-knife again, he added, after a pause: “By the way, Gomme, I wish you did not write such a shocking bad hand.” He smiled, half jesting, half serious. “Why don’t you practise writing?”
Gomme’s face became a dull, expressionless mask:
“I have, sir,” he said grimly.