By the time these architectural exercises were over it was time for me to go back to the station and catch my train; but not before I had tried to extract from Jack what he had been doing with himself since he was expelled from Stonebridge House.
As before, he was very uncommunicative. All I heard was that the reason he didn’t get my letters at Packworth was that he had told me, or thought he had told me, to address my letters to “T,” and I had always addressed them to “J.” But even had I addressed them correctly, he would only have received the first, as a fortnight after he left Stonebridge he went to London, where he had hitherto been working as a grocer’s shop-boy. You should have seen the look of disgust with which he referred to this part of his life! But now, having seen Merrett, Barnacle, and Company’s advertisement, he was applying for their situation.
But in all his story he would tell me nothing about his home, or his relatives, so that as to knowing who my friend Smith was, or where he came from, I went back that afternoon to Brownstroke as much in the dark as ever. But I had found him!
Chapter Eleven.
How my Friend Smith and I entered on New Duties in New Company.
The two days which followed my eventful expedition to London were among the most anxious I ever spent. Young and unsophisticated as I was, I knew quite enough of my own affairs to feel that a crisis in my life had been reached, and that a great deal, nay, everything, depended on how my application for Merrett, Barnacle, and Company’s situation turned out. If I succeeded there, I should have made a start in life—modest enough, truly, but a start all the same—and who was to say whether from the bottom of the ladder I might not some day and somehow get to the top? But if I missed, I knew full well my uncle would take my affairs into his own hands, and probably put me to work which would be distasteful, and in which I should be miserable. So you see, reader, I had a good deal staked on my little venture.
The miserable thing was that I might never hear at all from the firm, but go on hoping against hope, day after day, in a suspense which would be worse than knowing straight off that I had failed. However, I kept up appearances before my uncle, for I didn’t want him to think it was no use waiting a little before he took me in hand himself. I spent several hours a day working up my arithmetic, making out imaginary invoices against every imaginable person, and generally preparing myself for office work. And the rest of my time I spent in cogitation and speculation as to my future destiny, and the merits and demerits of those enviable mortals, Doubleday, Wallop, and Crow, of the Export Department of Messrs Merrett, Barnacle, and Company.
On Tuesday morning two letters came for me with the London postmark, one in Jack Smith’s well-remembered handwriting, the other with the awful initials, “M., B., and Company,” on the seal.