“Make out a cheque, Mr. Roundhand, for the three months’ salary of this perverted young man.”
“Twenty-one pun’ five, Roundhand, and nothing for the stamp!” cried out that audacious Swinney. “There it is, sir, re-ceipted. You needn’t cross it to my banker’s. And if any of you gents like a glass of punch this evening at eight o’clock, Bob Swinney’s your man, and nothing to pay. If Mr. Brough would do me the honour to come in and take a whack? Come, don’t say no, if you’d rather not!”
We couldn’t stand this impudence, and all burst out laughing like mad.
“Leave the room!” yelled Mr. Brough, whose face had turned quite blue; and so Bob took his white hat off the peg, and strolled away with his “tile,” as he called it, very much on one side. When he was gone, Mr. Brough gave us another lecture, by which we all determined to profit; and going up to Roundhand’s desk put his arm round his neck, and looked over the ledger.
“What money has been paid in to-day, Roundhand?” he said, in a very kind way.
“The widow, sir, came with her money; nine hundred and four ten and six—say 904l. 10s. 6d. Captain Sparr, sir, paid his shares up; grumbles, though, and says he’s no more: fifty shares, two instalments—three fifties, sir.”
“He’s always grumbling!”
“He says he has not a shilling to bless himself with until our dividend day.”
“Any more?”
Mr. Roundhand went through the book, and made it up nineteen hundred pounds in all. We were doing a famous business now; though when I came into the office, we used to sit, and laugh, and joke, and read the newspapers all day; bustling into our seats whenever a stray customer came. Brough never cared about our laughing and singing then, and was hand and glove with Bob Swinney; but that was in early times, before we were well in harness.