At the same moment the door of an inner office opened, and Mr Auberly’s head clerk, who had seen his employer’s approach through the dusty window, issued forth and bowed respectfully, with a touch of condolence in his air, as he referred with much regret to the fire at Beverly Square, and hoped that Miss Auberly was not much the worse of her late alarm.
“Well, she is not the better for it,” said Mr Auberly; “but I hope she will be quite well soon. Indeed, the doctor assures me of this, if care is taken of her. I wish that was the only thing on my mind just now; but I am perplexed about another matter, Mr Quill. Are you alone?”
“Quite alone, sir,” said Quill, throwing open the door of the inner office.
“I want to consult with you about Frederick,” said Mr Auberly as he entered.
The door shut out the remainder of the consultation at this point, so Edward Hooper consulted the clock again and sighed.
If sighs could have delivered Hooper from his sorrows, there is no doubt that the accumulated millions of which he was delivered in that office, during the last five years, would have filled him with a species of semi-celestial bliss.
At last, the hands of the clock reached the hour, the hour that was wont to evoke Ned’s last sigh and set him free; but it was an aggravating clock. Nothing would persuade it to hurry. It would not, for all the untold wealth contained in the great stores of Tooley Street, have abated the very last second of the last minute of the hour. On the contrary, it went through that second quite as slowly as all the others. Ned fancied it went much slower at that one on purpose; and then, with a sneaking parade of its intention to begin to strike, it gave a prolonged hiss, and did its duty, and nothing but its duty; by striking the hour at a pace so slow, that it recalled forcibly to Ned Hooper’s imaginative mind, “the minute-gun at sea.”
There was a preliminary warning given by that clock some time before the premonitory hiss. Between this harbinger of coming events, and the joyful sound which was felt to be “an age,” Ned was wont to wipe his pen and arrange his papers. When the hiss began, he invariably closed his warehouse book and laid it in the desk, and had the desk locked before the first stroke of the hour. While the “minute-gun at sea” was going on, he changed his office-coat for a surtout, not perfectly new, and a white hat with a black band, the rim of which was not perfectly straight. So exact and methodical was Ned in these operations, that his hand usually fell on the door-latch as the last gun was fired by the aggravating clock. On occasions of unusual celerity he even managed to drown the last shot in the bang of the door, and went off with a sensation of triumph.
On the present occasion, however, Ned Hooper deemed it politic to be so busy, that he could not attend to the warnings of the timepiece. He even sat on his stool a full quarter of an hour beyond the time of departure. At length, Mr Auberly issued forth.
“Mr Quill,” said he, “my mind is made up, so it is useless to urge such considerations on me. Good-night.”