"It would be one fellow, of course," said Fitzgerald manfully, "if you were only speaking of one: if you said 'a Peabody Yid,' for instance.... But if you were talking of several," he mused, "why you'd say 'Peabody Yids,' I s'pose. What?"
Mr. Clutterbuck was lost in thought. "But Yid means a Jew surely, doesn't it, Mr. Fitzgerald?" said the older man. "It's a vulgar name for a Jew, isn't it?"
"Why-y, yes," answered the other with nonchalance. "A German, or a Jew, or something of that sort. Then Peabody was a sort of philanthropical fellow: architect, I think."
Mr. Clutterbuck having got so far, said: "Oh!" He said no more; he went on writing; but, like the man in the Saga, his heart was ill at ease. For the first time in many months he was as sore and as anxious as ever he had been in the old days before good fortune came to him.
The seventh day of the New Year broke brightly, but never a word from Peter Street. Mr. Clutterbuck went so far as to speak first to his secretary, before his secretary had spoken to him, and to ask him, but with all the courtesy imaginable, whether something could not be done to reassure him?
Charlie Fitzgerald more than hinted that it was all nervousness. "Things aren't done in that way," he said worriedly. "They won't give me anything in writing, of course."
Mr. Clutterbuck foresaw yet another futile verbal message and he came as near to anger as such a man can come at all. He was quite evidently put out and annoyed. He went so far as to say:
"Mr. Fitzgerald, I did hope you would have done something for me."
And Charlie, who had a fine sense which told him when he had gone too far, got up and put a gentle hand on his employer's arm.