"Mrs. Marsden, if you please. And not too much of that." He looked about him wrathfully, involving half the upper floor in his displeasure. "I wish you'd all learnt manners before you got yourselves taken on here. 'Yes, Mrs. Marsden. No, Mrs. Marsden'—that's the way I hear you. Don't any of you know that Madam is the proper form of address when you're speaking to your employer's wife?"
When he went behind the glass all the clerks began to blunder and to get confused. He called for day-books, ledgers, and cash-books, and glanced at them with lordly superciliousness while the poor clerks humbly held them open before him. Nothing was ever quite right—he blamed somebody for illegible hand-writing, someone else for a blot, someone else for the dog's ear of a page.
As promised by Miss Woolfrey, he found the late Mrs. Thompson quietly working at the little corner table in his room. Then he stood before the fire warming his legs, and haranguing about shop-etiquette, up-to-date methods, time-saving systems, and complaining of the many faults that he had discovered.
His wife listened without discontinuing the work.
Gradually, in spite of all his dictatorial interferences, he was allowing her to do more and more work. He told the heads of the staff that when he was out of the way, they were to take their instructions from Mrs. Marsden. Then, when underlings came to him, obsequiously asking for his orders in regard to small matters, he said he could not be worried about trifles. Mrs. Marsden would direct them. He had more than enough important things to think of, and could not descend to petty details.
One afternoon he came in from the street, turned the type-writing girl out of the room, and told his wife to give him all her attention.
"Attend to me, old girl. News. Great news."
He slapped his legs, and laughed. He was elated and excited. It was a flash of jollity after months of gloom.
"Do you remember what I told you eighteen months ago?"