“Not ‘cared to,’ Standish. Be accurate, my good fellow, in word as in deed!”
“You hinted to me, sir——” stammered the unfortunate.
Thompson Jowell swelled to such portentous size at this that the clerk visibly shrank and dwindled before the awful presence.
“I am not accustomed to hint, Standish!”
“You intimated, sir, that if I was willing”—gulped the pallid Standish—“to devote my evenings to making up the New Year’s accounts and checking the files of duplicate invoices against the office-ledgers, you—you would undertake—or so you were good enough to give me to understand—that I should be the better for it!”
“But if I mentioned overtime,” returned his employer, thrusting his short fat hands under his wide coat-tails, and rocking backwards and forwards on the office hearthrug, a cheap and shabby article to which the great man was accustomed to point with pride as illustrative of the robust humility of his own nature, “I’ll eat my hat!” He glanced at the low-crowned, shiny beaver hanging on a wooden peg beside his private safe, in company with the shaggy box-coat and a fur-lined, velvet-collared cloak of sumptuous appearance, adding, “and that’s a meal would cost me thirty shillings. For there’s no such a thing as overtime. It don’t exist! And if you proved to me it did I wouldn’t believe you!” said Thompson Jowell, thrusting his thick right hand deep into the bosom of the gorgeous waistcoat, and puffing himself out still more. “For your time, young man! in return for a liberal salary of Twenty Shillings per week, belongs to Me—to Me, Standish, whenever I choose to employ it! As for being the better for having done the work you say you have, you are the better morally, in having discharged your duty to a generous employer; and if you choose to injure your constitution by stopping here o’ nights until eleven p.m. it’s no affair of mine. John Downright my name is!—besides the one that’s on the brass doorplate of these offices, and what I say is—it’s no affair of mine! Though, mind you! in burning gas upon these premises up to I don’t know what hour of the night, you’ve materially increased the Company’s quarterly bill, and in common justice ought to defray their charges. I’ll let you off that!—so think yourself lucky! and don’t come asking me to remunerate you for overtime again. Now, get out with you!”
Unlucky Standish, yellow and green with disappointed hopes and secret fury, and yet admiring, in spite of himself, the clever way in which he had been defrauded, backed towards the narrow door, and in the act collided with a visitor, who, entering, straightway impregnated and enlivened the dead and musty atmosphere with a heterogeneous mixture of choice perfumes, in which super-fine Macassar and bear’s grease, the fashionable Frangipani and Jockey Club; Russia-leather, a suspicion of stables, and more than a hint of malt liquor, combined with the fragrance of the choice Havana cheroot which the newcomer removed from his mouth as he entered, to make way for the filial salutation:
“Halloa, Governor! All serene?”
You then saw young Mortimer Jowell, only surviving sapling of the sturdy stem of tough old British oak ticketed Thompson Jowell, received in that fond father’s arms, who warmly hugged him to his bosom, crying:
“Morty! My own boy!”