“Don’t you get excited, Dimmy,” said Miss Grace; “but get on with your work. Just check those Brighton figures, will you? There, you’ve gone and got Billy Murdoch down forty-seven instead o’ forty-three; and you’ve missed Georgie Brann out altogether.”
“I call that cool,” said I, “seeing that you copied ’em out yourself.”
“Well, didn’t I tell you to check ’em?” said she. “Now look here, Dimmy, either drop your rotting, and buckle to, or just clear out and leave me on my own.”
“I will be good,” said I meekly.
But really my position was ludicrous. I had been with her twenty minutes already, yet my high purpose had not been even broached. I had missed several chances. I felt my brazenness to be subsiding. If I didn’t make a start at once, I should get into a funk, and smirch the name of Little Clumpton and become the common mock of Hickory. Yet how could I begin? Any little bravado I might have had at the start was already slain by the sense of the egregious errors I had committed. The only course open was to fall back on my nationality. Was it not lucky that I prided myself on my Anglo-Saxon fibre and directness? Let me say what I meant exactly. Hard slogging, and not the goose game, as became a Briton, don’t you know.
“Now then, Dimmy,” said Miss Grace, “the Bristol figures are not on the ceiling; they’re on the table. Just call ’em out while I dot ’em down. Go on.”
“Grace, senior,” I read, “not out, one hundred and sixty-eight. Oh, and that reminds me, Grace, that I’ve got something serious to say.”
“Of course,” said she; “but you look what you’re doing, or I shall have something serious to say as well.”
“Grace,” said I, standing up, “I’ve got something extremely serious to say.”
That young person put her pencil down so gently that the restraint she used was noticeable. The light in her eye made me quiver.