It was a little after twelve when I was finally called into the private office of Mr. ——. I was rather faint from hunger and stiff from standing still so long after a long walk.
Mr. —— sat with his back to a window, in whose full light I stood, hat in hand.
“You’re after this job I advertised, I understand,” he began.
“Yes.”
“Well, it ain’t no great job; it’s just doin’ chores round the house, and I can’t afford to pay much for it. Have you ever done work like that?”
“I have been a porter at a hotel.”
“Have you any recommends?” he asked, sharply. I handed to him the two already mentioned, and as he read them I watched him with close interest. Young, alert, intensely energetic, at the head, or near it, of a prominent house, the controller, in part at least, of an enormous enterprise, and a considerable personage, no doubt, in his own social circle, yet his wholesale butchery of swine could scarcely be a ghastlier slaughter than was his treatment of his mother-tongue.
He looked up at me.
“Say, young fellow, is them all the recommends you have? You was a very short time at both of them places.”
This fatal defect in my references had never occurred to me, and I began to stammer explanations which only served to get me into deeper water. Mr. —— interrupted me, and handing back my letters, he said: