The unfortunate Batterby tried to stammer out, “Oh, your Grace, I understood....”
His master turned round like a barking dog: “Git out!” he said. “D’yer hear? Git out!” And Batterby got out, still humbly, and went through the luxurious little corridor, past the outer office, stumbled down the broad dirty stone stairs of the place; he was as near tears as a man of his age can be. He wondered how he would dare to face the little house in Golder’s Green. It was ten o’clock.
He elbowed his way into the “Dragon” under the arch; there were always some of the fellows there, and he began to take something for his despair, and to talk shop with the others of that sad, drifting, lost crowd of the newspaper men, the publicists, the slaves. Meanwhile in that luxurious little room a hundred yards away the Duke had sent for his secretary again.
“Whose to worry John K.?” he said.
The secretary’s quiet reply surprised him.
“Don’t send any one, Duke; don’t have a word of it in the paper.”
His Grace the Proprietor of the “Messenger” conferring the Order of the Boot on Mr. Batterby, of Golder’s Green in the County of Middlesex.
The master of so many lives had become used to such comment. Time and again it had saved him from pitfalls and from crashes. Though he made up for it by occasional violence, advice from that quarter, when he got it in a certain tone, he never dared neglect; but he growled and he wanted to know the reasons.