“Yes, sir; I slept out.”
“I gathered as much.” Mr. Blair's long white chin whiskers quivered as Mr. Blair's condemning eyes comprehended the shrinking figure before him from head to foot—the rumpled hair; the bloodshot eyes; the wrinkled clothes; the soiled collar; the skewed necktie; the fluttering hands. “Look here, young man; have you been drinking?”
“No, sir—yes, sir; that is, I—I had a little beer last night,” owned Emanuel miserably.
“A little beer, huh?”
Mr. Blair, being popularly reputed to keep a private quart flask in his coat closet and at intervals to refresh himself therefrom behind the cover of the closet door, had a righteous contempt for wantons who publicly plied themselves with potables, whether of a malt, a spirituous or a vinous nature.
“A little beer, huh?” He put tons of menace into the repetition of the words. “Forever and a day traipsing off on vacations seems to breed bad habits in you, Moon. Now, look here! This is the first time this ever happened—so far as I know. I am inclined to excuse it this once. But see to it that it doesn't happen again—ever!”
“No, sir,” said Emanuel gratefully. “It won't.”
And it did not.
So shaken was Emanuel as to his nerves that three whole nights elapsed before he felt equal to practicing on his new clarinet. After that, though, in all his spare moments at the boarding house he played assiduously.
For the purposes of this narrative the passage of the ensuing fortnight is of no consequence. It passed, and that brings us to a Friday afternoon in mid-October. On the Friday afternoon in question the paymaster of the Great Western Crosstie Company deposited in the Commonwealth Bank, for overnight safeguarding, the funds to meet his semimonthly pay roll due to contractors, subcontractors, tow-boat owners and extra labourers, the total amounting to a goodly sum.