Stephen said “Thank you,” and went off to deliver up the bat.
“What a time you’ve been!” was all the thanks he got in that quarter. “Why couldn’t you come straight back with it?”
This was gratifying. Stephen was learning at least one lesson that afternoon—that a fag, if he ever expects to be thanked for anything he does, is greatly mistaken. He went off in a highly injured frame of mind to Loman’s study.
Master Paul’s directions might have been more explicit—“The eighth door on the right; next to the one with the kicks.” Now, as it happened, the door with the kicks on it was itself the eighth door on the right, with a study on either side of it, and which of these two was Loman’s Stephen could not by the unaided light of nature determine. He peeped into Number 7; it was empty.
“Perhaps he’s cut his name on the door,” thought Stephen.
He might have done so, but as there were about fifty different letters cut on the door, he was not much wiser for that.
“I’d better look and see if his name is on his collars,” Stephen next reflected, remembering with what care his mother had marked his own linen.
He opened a drawer; it was full of jam-pots. At that moment the door opened behind him, and the next thing Stephen was conscious of was that he was half-stunned with a terrific box on the ears.
“Take that, you young thief!” said the indignant owner of the study; “I’ll teach you to stick your finger in my jam. What do you mean by it?” and a cuff served as a comma between each sentence.
“I really didn’t—I only wanted—I was looking for—”