The directors were looking at him with expectant faces.
He bowed toward them and opened his lips—and broke into a long, deep, helpless cough.
John put up his hand to the directors, smiling, and escorted him swiftly to the door....
There was a pleasant hurry of sound among the directors, a getting into light overcoats and shaking of hands, a murmur of dividends, and a rush for trains.
Up in the little office Simeon Tetlow stood by the window. He held up his hand—groping, trembling toward the light—He looked at it, and tried to hold it still—and still looked at it—the light falling faintly through it.... “They trust me, John! They trust me! But how dare they trust me!” The shaking hand flickered its quivering, helpless dance against the light.
The young man drew it down, covering it with his own. “They trust you, sir, because you’ve never failed them,” he said quietly.
XXI
The assistant bookkeeper was finishing his accounts for the night. He made another entry and blotted’ it before he closed the book and looked up, with a little offhand nod.