“There,” said she, speaking amiably in her glow of satisfaction: “you can go to the office now—if you like. I’ll not stop you; but you’ll have to march through the streets leaving your clothes in that closet.”
Under these difficulties Jenkins did not quite see his way to get there. Mrs. Jenkins went instead, catching Mr. Roland Yorke just upon his arrival.
“What’s up, that Jenkins is not here?” began Roland, before she could speak.
“Jenkins is not in a fit state to get out of his bed, and I have come to tell Mr. Galloway so,” replied she.
Roland Yorke’s face grew to twice its usual length at the news. “I say, though, that will never do, Mrs. Jenkins. What’s to become of this office?”
“The office must do the best it can without him. He’s not coming to it.”
“I can’t manage it,” said Roland, in consternation. “I should go dead, if I had to do Jenkins’s work, and my own as well.”
“He’ll go dead, unless he takes some rest in time, and gets a little good nursing. I should like to know how I am to nurse him, if he is down here all day?”
“That’s not the question,” returned Roland, feeling excessively blank. “The question is, how the office, and I, and Galloway are to get on without him? Couldn’t he come in a sedan?”
“Yes, he can; if he likes to come without his clothes,” retorted Mrs. Jenkins. “I have taken care to lock them up.”