Then the contractor let fly an exclamation, half-grunt, half-roar. He dashed his pen back and forth across the page in such a savage "X" that he broke the pen-nib off short.
"'R-r-rite 'er agen!" he bawled, "every blame word of 'er. What the blue blazes d'ye mean by stickin' in them periods whar I told yeh fur to put commas. And I said 'have went'. You got it 'have gone'. Didn't they learn y' no grammar at th' school you went tuh? Take off that hat—'n git out y'r machine—'n r-rite 'r all over agen. Gettin' sore on y'r job, or what, Evans?"
"I'm sorry, sir," said Evans, hastily opening his desk and slipping a fresh letterhead into his typewriter; "I'll do it over again, right away."
"Oh-h—y' will, hey," Sir Thomas drawled in irony, as he got up, put on his gray motor-coat and smart cloth cap, and took a pleased look at himself in the mirror, "I thought maybe you was goin' to refuse for to do it, Evans. I guess yeh will do it over agen—an' ten times over agen, if I say so."
By the time coat and hat were donned and Sir Thomas had turned himself about several times before the looking-glass, the secretary had the letter re-written. Harrison, scarcely glancing at it—he was growing hungry, for it was 6.15—dipped a new pen in the ink-well, gave it a flick, and scrawled his signature, and glanced again in the mirror.
Evans nearly jumped over the typewriter desk at the burst of language that followed Sir Thomas' look into the mahogany-framed pier-glass. Across the bottom of the contractor's coat was a row of ink-dots, showing up disastrously on their gray background—the result of that pointless, swaggering, utterly expletive flick of the plebeian pen.
A few moments later, Sir Thomas' big smooth-gliding auto pulled up in front of Benwell's Dye House. Benwell's was the oldest-established dyeing and cleaning firm in the city. Out of the automobile, coat on arm, stepped the contractor himself. He was going to give himself another exhibition of his "pur-rsonal power."
In the dyer's office, he flopped the coat down on the counter, with what he deemed an impressive rattle of buttons, and crooked his finger beckoningly at Joseph Benwell, who was at the moment talking to another customer, further down the counter. Here came Harrison's first surprise: Benwell took not the slightest notice of Sir Thomas' summons until, after a moment, the prior customer went out. Then the dyer turned, adjusted his glasses, and, as though he had seen Sir Thomas Harrison for the first time that moment, came over briskly.
"Th' name is Harrison," said the contractor, gratingly, "I don't need to tell you that my time is worth money." He knit his brows, and fixed his bulldog eyes upon the face of the mild but steady-glancing Englishman who faced him across the counter.