Colonel Craighill, believing firmly that merit and length of tenure should be favoured in promotions, had installed as Walsh’s successor an accountant who had been chief book-keeper in the office for many years. Walsh had mildly suggested Wayne, but Colonel Craighill rejected the recommendation.
“The suggestion does credit to your kindness of heart, Walsh, but—you must know it is impossible.”
Paddock called on Wayne at the office one afternoon to find him bending studiously over a mass of papers. Wayne greeted his old friend amiably.
“Don’t be afraid! I’ll not bite you this time.”
He cleared a chair of papers and bade the clergyman make himself at home.
“I won’t conceal it from you, old man, that I was in bad shape that night you came in on me here. I saw everything red—not pink, but a bright burning scarlet. You won’t mind my saying it, but your call was deucedly inopportune. I had come up here with my tongue hanging out to drink that quart, and to be caught with the goods on by a gentleman of the cloth annoyed me. I’ll not spare your feelings in the matter! And then you looked so fresh and fit and good that that riled me too. I was ashamed of it afterward—the way I received your life confession. And the bottle——”
“Did you eat it?” laughed Paddock, delighted to find his old friend in this gay humour.
“I told you I was going to the bad that night, and you went out with a hurt look as though I had kicked your dog or done some low thing of that sort. Your tact is wholly admirable. If you had said one word to me when I told you I had started for hell I should have screamed and made a terrible fuss. Strong men could not have held me. You went away and left me, by which token I know you possess the wisdom of serpents. And I proceeded at once to get beautifully drunk.”
Paddock said nothing, but smiled sadly.
“But I have cut it out now. I shall look no more upon the rum bottle when it’s red, not because I don’t like it, but because I’ve thought of much more dreadful and heinous sins.”