“Matthew Arnold Dodson.”
“Surely, surely that is a remote contingency,” observed Mr. Aristophanes Luff with a purr of mild protest.
“Yes, Luff, that is my deliberate opinion. For breadth of view, aplomb of manner, maturity of judgment, knowledge of the world and of the human heart, there are few youths in all this great metropolis to compare with Matthew Arnold Dodson.”
Inferiority of station and mildness of disposition prevented Mr. Aristophanes Luff from controverting what he felt obliged to regard as an extravagant judgment. He was content to wipe his spectacles, and to blow his nose in as clear a key of dissonance as an innate weakness of character could compass.
In the meantime, the subject of this remarkable eulogium, seated on his high stool dispensing wisdom, instruction and stinging rebuke to the bewildered and trembling recipient of these commodities, had no such exalted sentiments for its author.
“I tell you, Luney,” said Mr. Dodson, with an expression on his wizened countenance that would not have been unbecoming to that of Voltaire, “I can’t make up my mind whether Pa is a bigger ass than Octavius, or whether Octavius is a bigger ass than Pa. Octavius is a pompous ass, and Pa is a sentimental ass. Octavius has a bit of sentiment in his pomp, and Pa has a bit of pomp in his sentiment; so I suppose one takes the cruet and the other takes the casters. Bah, it makes me sick to think that you and I have to keep dipping the ensign to a couple of amateurs who don’t know they are born! They have about as much knowledge of the game they are trying to play as a sucking-pig has of brown sherry. But you must promise me, Luney, to let this go no further.”
“Oh, n-n-no, sir, I will not,” said the boy, not knowing in the least what it was he must let go no further.
“Look here,” said his mentor truculently; “if you say ‘sir’ to me again I shall smack your head, and I shall smack it hard. This is the third time to-day I have warned you. Pull yourself together. You are not now with your Aunt Priscilla at Beaconsfield Villa, Hither Green. You are in the counting-house of Crumpett and Hawker, my son, and the sooner you understand that the better it will be for everybody. I shall not show you how to tie a double knot any more. The next time I shall put my hand round your ear; and it will hurt. If I had not been the best-hearted chap that ever swaggered round the second circle at the Empire on a Saturday night, you would have got the boot this very afternoon. Pa wanted to report you to Octavius. But I stood firm. ‘No, Father,’ I said, ‘the youth is off his filbert, but so was Blair Athol when he won the Derby.’ There, over goes the paste! Don’t stand gazing at it, you lunatic, but get some back numbers of The Athenæum and mop it up.”
XIX
It is not to be surmised that William Jordan, Junior, was in any sense persona gratissima in the distinguished society in which he was called upon to move between the hours of eight and seven. In the eyes of Mr. James Dodson, who, apparently, had annexed the entire zone of practical wisdom as his province—at least, his range of lore was amazing, his tactics on all occasions, in the office and out of it, were masterly in the extreme, while his consummate address and fertility of resource had long been the despair of all who had been admitted to the honour of his intercourse—in the eyes of this considerable scholar in the stern school of experience, William Jordan, Junior, was no more than an object of contemptuous compassion. At the hands of this austere master of “hard-shell” practicality he was the daily recipient of much profound advice which probed the depths of human wisdom, tempered by more or less severe personal chastisement to help him to assimilate it.