His mentor opened a door in a glass partition and bade him go within.
“The Chief will send for you presently,” he said with courteous austerity. “Take a chair.”
Several street-persons, inclining to young manhood, were in the room. One and all were sitting exceedingly upright on leather-covered chairs. Apparently these youthful street-persons were stouter and taller and stronger than himself. They also had that indefinable quality in their faces that suggested that their outlook on men and things was more mature. A complete silence was maintained by all; indeed, their attitude seemed designed to suggest that other than themselves, no other individual was present in the room.
At first the boy stood nervously in the centre of the room with his hat in his hand. The other occupants contemplated him with leisurely and impersonal aloofness. Presently it was borne in upon the boy that it would call for more courage to stand than to sit, so he sat. He took a chair, and poised himself upon its extreme verge, striving vainly to control the beatings of his heart. It seemed as though they must choke him.
In a little while the undersized and wizened boy entered with the dignity of one who is accustomed to accept responsibility in great issues.
“The Chief will see John Wilkins,” he said.
John Wilkins, a muscular specimen of British youth, six feet high, rose and followed the emissary from high places with an air of slightly bored indifference.
The boy pressed both hands over his beating heart.
The emissary from high places entered again. He carried a newspaper that had pictures.
“Care to look at Punch?” he said. He handed the newspaper that had pictures to the boy with an air of carefully defined abstraction which suggested that he viewed this amenity in the light of a duty.