“Let me just give you one instance—show you his sort Every one knew that he ought to have been chief clerk, and that Rodway's appointment was sheer influence. The staff was mad, and some one said Rodway need not expect to have a particularly good time.
“Perkins overheard him, and chipped in at once. 'Mr. Rodway'—you know his dry manner, wagging his eyeglass all the time—'is our superior officer, and we are bound to render him every assistance in our power, or,' and then he was splendid, 'resign our commissions.' Rodway, they say, has retired; but the worst of it is that as Perkins has been once passed over he 'ill not succeed.
“Perhaps it won't matter, poor chap. I say,” said Lighthead, hurriedly, turning his back and examining a pipe on the mantel-piece, “do you think he is going to... I mean, has he a chance?”
“Just a chance, I believe. Have you been long with him?”
“That's not it—it's what he's done for a... for fellows. Strangers don't know Perkins. You might talk to him for a year, and never hear anything but shop. Then one day you get into a hole, and you would find out another Perkins.
“Stand by you?” and he wheeled round. “Rather, and no palaver either: with money and with time and with... other things that do a fellow more good than the whole concern, and no airs. There's more than one man in our office has cause to... bless Schedule Perkins.
“Let me tell you how he got... one chap out of the biggest scrape he'll ever fall into. Do you mind me smoking?” And then he made himself busy with matches and a pipe that was ever going out for the rest of the story.
“Well, you see, this man, clerk in our office, had not been long up from the country, and he was young. Wasn't quite bad, but he couldn't hold his own with older fellows.
“He got among a set that had suppers in their rooms, and gambled a bit, and he lost and borrowed, and... in fact, was stone broke.
“It's not very pleasant for a fellow to sit in his room a week before Christmas, and know that he may be cashiered before the holidays, and all through his own fault.