Humphrey had left lights for him. He was awake, too; there was a crack of light at the bottom of his bedroom door. But the door was shut tight.
Henry put out all the lights and shut himself in his own disorderly room.
He stood for a time looking at the mess; everything he owned, strewed about on chairs, table and floor. Everything where it had fallen.
He considered finishing unpacking the suit-case. Pushed it with his foot.
'Just have to get at these things,' he muttered aloud. 'Make a job of it. Do it the first thing to-morrow, before I go to the office.'
Then he dug out the box of books that stood beside the bed, the volume entitled Will Power and Self Mastery.
He sat on the bed for an hour, reading one or another of the vehemently pithy sentences, then gazing at the wall, knitting his brows, and mumbling the words over and over until the small meaning they had ever possessed was lost.
6
He came almost stealthily into the office of The Weekly Voice of Sunbury on the Monday morning. He had not fallen really asleep until the small hours. When he awoke, Humphrey was long gone and the breakfast things stood waiting on the centre table. And there they were now. He hadn't so much as rinsed them in the sink.
Humphrey sat behind his roll-top desk, back of the railing. Old Mr Boice, the proprietor, was at his own desk, out in front. At the first glimpse of his massive head and shoulders with the heavy white whiskers falling down on his shirt front, Henry, hesitating on the sill, gave a little quick sigh of relief. He let himself, moving with the self-consciousness that somewhat resembled dignity, through the gate in the railing and took his chair at the inkstained pine table that served him for a desk.