“Tell me your name,” suggested Mr. Clodd, “and I’ll forgive you.”
“Tommy,” was the answer—“I mean Jane.”
“Make up your mind,” advised Mr. Clodd; “don’t let me influence you. I only want the truth.”
“You see,” explained the person at the desk, “everybody calls me Tommy, because that used to be my name. But now it’s Jane.”
“I see,” said Mr. Clodd. “And which am I to call you?”
The person at the desk pondered. “Well, if this scheme you and Mr. Hope have been talking about really comes to anything, we shall be a good deal thrown together, you see, and then I expect you’ll call me Tommy—most people do.”
“You’ve heard about the scheme? Mr. Hope has told you?”
“Why, of course,” replied Tommy. “I’m Mr. Hope’s devil.”
For the moment Clodd doubted whether his old friend had not started a rival establishment to his own.
“I help him in his work,” Tommy relieved his mind by explaining. “In journalistic circles we call it devilling.”