“Not drawn out. Impossible!” said Mr. Croft.
“Then I’m off,” cried the captain, with a tremendous oath. “I can’t wait another tide for any clerk breathing.”
“Send back the porters, captain, if you please,” said Mr. Croft, coolly. “The whole cargo must be unpacked. I took it for granted, Mr. Basil, that you had drawn the invoice, according to order, yesterday morning; and of course the goods were packed in the evening. I was certainly wrong in taking it for granted that you would be punctual. A man of business should take nothing for granted. This is a thing that will not occur to me again as long as I live.”
I poured forth expressions of contrition; but apparently unmoved by them, and without anger or impatience in his manner, he turned from me as soon as the porters came back with the goods, and ordered them all to be unpacked and replaced in the warehouse. I was truly concerned.
“I believe you spent your evening yesterday with young Mr. Hudson?” said he, turning to me.
“Yes, sir,—I am sincerely sorry———”
“Sorrow, in these cases, does no good, sir,” interrupted he. “I thought I had sufficiently warned you of the danger of forming that intimacy. Midnight carousing will not do for men of business.”
“Carousing, sir!” said I. “Give me leave to assure you that we were not carousing. We were only at a frog-concert.”
Mr. Croft, who had at least suppressed his displeasure till now, looked absolutely angry; he thought I was making a joke of him. When I convinced him that I was in earnest, he changed from anger to astonishment, with a large mixture of contempt in his nasal muscles.
“A frog-concert!” repeated he. “And is it possible that any man could neglect an invoice merely to go to hear a parcel of frogs croaking in a swamp? Sir, you will never do in a mercantile house.” He walked off to the warehouse, and left me half mortified and half provoked.