St. George watched him walking sidewise down the aisle as he always walked when he was excited. Chillingworth was a good sort at heart, too; but given, as the bishop had once said of some one else, to spending right royally a deal of sagacity under the obvious impression that this is the only wisdom.
At his desk next morning Chillingworth gave to St. George a note from Amory, who had been at Long Branch with The Aloha when the letter was posted and was coming up that noon to put ashore Bennietod.
"May Cawthorne have his day off to-morrow and go with me?" the letter ended. "I'll call up at noon to find out."
"Yah!" growled Chillingworth, "it's breaking up the whole staff, that's what it's doin'. You'll all want cut-glass typewriters next."
"If I should sail to-day," observed St. George, quite as if he were boarding a Sound steamer, "I'd like to take on at least two men. And I'd like Amory and Cawthorne. You could hardly go yourself, could you, Mr. Chillingworth?"
"No, I couldn't," growled Chillingworth, "I've got to keep my tastes down. And I've got to save up to buy kid gloves for the staff. Look here—" he added, and hesitated.
"Yes?" St. George complied in some surprise.
"Bennietod's half sick anyway," said Chillingworth, "he's thin as water, and if you would care—"
"By all means then," St. George assented heartily, "I would care immensely. Bennietod sick is like somebody else healthy. Will you mind getting Amory on the wire when he calls up, and tell him to show up without fail at my place at noon to-day? And to wait there for me."
Little Cawthorne, with a pair of shears quite a yard long, was sitting at his desk clipping jokes for the fiction page. He was humming a weary little tune to the effect that "Billy Enny took a penny but now he hadn't many—Lookie They!" with which he whiled away the hours of his gravest toil, coming out strongly on the "Lookie They!" until Benfy on the floor above pounded for quiet which he never got.