"There, there, don't think of it again," said Mr. Crowninshield kindly. "I should have remembered you are not a man's age and cannot be expected to have the judgment that goes with fifty or sixty years of living. Even old codgers like myself blunder sometimes."
His eyes twinkled and in the radiance of his smile Walter saw the last cloud of wrath roll from his brow. Truly, as Jerry had affirmed, Mr. Crowninshield's rages were like thunderstorms—awesome while they lasted but unfailingly followed by sunshine.
CHAPTER IX
MORE CLUES
Notwithstanding Mr. Crowninshield's comforting words, however, Walter could not shake off the consciousness that take it all in all he had blundered desperately throughout the entire train of events connected with Lola and his vanity was sadly hurt. If any good had come out of what he had done it was more by chance than as a result of wise calculation. He had meant well, that was all that could be said, and the patronage these words implied was by no means flattering to one anxious to make himself valuable to his employer.
What a boob he was; what a blunderer! The name Mr. Crowninshield had so wrathfully bestowed on him was unquestionably deserved. It fitted him like a glove. The fact that the great man had afterward sought to palliate the sting of the term did not actually help matters any. What he had thought in the beginning and so spontaneously declared was what he really believed, and as his dispirited retainer observed to himself, who could blame him?
He couldn't have made a worse start at a job had he tried. In his depression he almost wished he had never seen Surfside, the Crowninshields, or anything belonging to them.
Nor was his melancholy lightened when he found on entering the house that the telephone line was busy and that some one was calling Mr. Crowninshield. Goodness only knew how long it might be now before the wire would be free for the master to reach and warn Bob to keep secret the tidings his brother had tattled to him. Wasn't it infernal luck to encounter this delay? If he had only held his tongue in the first place! Well, it had taught him a lesson. The next time he got mixed up in somebody else's affairs he would keep them to himself.