The Channings. Henry Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ venture here again, until Mr. Hurst says he may come with safety.”

      “I should have told him that, to pacify him, whether you had said it or not,” candidly avowed Mrs. Jenkins. “And now I must go back home on the run. As good have no one to mind my shop as that young house-girl of ours. If a customer comes in for a pair of black stockings, she’ll take and give ‘em a white knitted nightcap. She’s as deficient of common sense as Jenkins is. Your servant, sir. Good morning, young gentlemen!”

      “Here, wait a minute!” cried Mr. Galloway, as she was speeding off. “I cannot understand at all. The keys could not have been changed as they lay on the flags.”

      “Neither can anybody else understand it,” returned Mrs. Jenkins. “If Jenkins was not a sober man—and he had better let me catch him being anything else!—I should say the two, him and Ketch, had had a drop too much. The bishop himself could make neither top nor tail of it. It’ll teach Jenkins not to go gallivanting again after other folk’s business!”

      She finally turned away, and Mr. Galloway set himself to revolve the perplexing narrative. The more he thought, the less he was nearer doing so; like the bishop, he could make neither top nor tail of it. “It is entirely beyond belief!” he remarked to Arthur Channing; “unless Ketch took out the wrong keys!”

      “And if he took out the wrong keys, how could he have locked the south door?” interrupted Roland Yorke. “I’d lay anybody five shillings that those mischievous scamps of college boys were at the bottom of it; I taxed Gerald with it, and he flew out at me for my pains. But the seniors may not have been in it. You should have heard the bell clank out last night, Mr. Galloway!”

      “I suppose it brought out a few,” was Mr. Galloway’s rejoinder.

      “It did that,” said Arthur Channing. “Myself for one. When I saw the bishop emerge from the college doors, I could scarcely believe my sight.”

      “I’d have given half-a-crown to see him!” cried Roland Yorke. “If there’s any fun going on, it is sure to be my fate to miss it. Cator was at my house, having a cigar with me; and, though we heard the bell, we did not disturb ourselves to see what it might mean.”

      “What is your opinion of last night’s work, Arthur?” asked Mr. Galloway, returning to the point.

      Arthur’s opinion was a very decided one, but he did not choose to say so. The meeting with the college boys at their stealthy post in the cloisters, when he and Hamish were passing through at dusk, a few nights before, coupled with the hints then thrown out of the “serving out” of Ketch, could leave little doubt as to the culprits. Arthur returned an answer, couched in general terms.

      “Could it have been the college boys, think you?” debated Mr. Galloway.

      “Not being a college boy, I cannot speak positively, sir,” he said, laughing. “Gaunt knows nothing of it. I met him as I was going home to breakfast from my early hour’s work here, and he told me he did not. There would have been no harm done, after all, but for the accident to Jenkins.”

      “One of you gentlemen can just step in to see Jenkins in the course of the day, and reassure him that he is not wanted,” said Mr. Galloway. “I know how necessary it is to keep the mind tranquil in any fear of brain affection.”

      No more was said, and the occupation of the day began. A busy day was that at Mr. Galloway’s, much to the chagrin of Roland Yorke, who had an unconquerable objection to doing too much. He broke out into grumblings at Arthur, when the latter came running in from his duty at college.

      “I’ll tell you what is, Channing; you ought not to have made the bargain to go to that bothering organ on busy days; and Galloway must have been out of his mind to let you make it. Look at the heap of work there is to do!”

      “I will soon make up for the lost hour,” said Arthur, setting to with a will. “Where’s Mr. Galloway?”

      “Gone to the bank,” grumbled Roland. “And I have had to answer a dozen callers-in at least, and do all my writing besides. I wonder what possessed Jenkins to go and knock his head to powder?”

      Mr. Galloway shortly returned, and sat down to write. It was a thing he rarely did; he left writing to his clerks, unless it was the writing of letters. By one o’clock the chief portion of the work was done, and Mr. Roland Yorke’s spirits recovered their elasticity. He went home to dinner, as usual. Arthur preferred to remain at his post, and get on further, sending the housekeeper’s little maid out for a twopenny roll, which he ate as he wrote. He was of a remarkably conscientious nature, and thought it only fair to sacrifice a little time in case of need, in return for the great favour which had been granted him by Mr. Galloway. Many of the families who had sons in the college school dined at one o’clock, as it was the most convenient hour for the boys. Growing youths are not satisfied with anything less substantial than a dinner in the middle of the day, and two dinners in a household tell heavily upon the house-keeping. The Channings did not afford two, neither did Lady Augusta Yorke; so their hour was one o’clock.

      “What a muff you must be to go without your dinner!” cried Roland Yorke to Arthur, when he returned at two o’clock. “I wouldn’t.”

      “I have had my dinner,” said Arthur.

      “What did you have?” cried Roland, pricking up his ears. “Did Galloway send to the hotel for roast ducks and green peas? That’s what we had at home, and the peas were half-boiled, and the ducks were scorched, and cooked without stuffing. A wretched set of incapables our house turns out! and my lady does not know how to alter it. You have actually finished that deed, Channing?”

      “It is finished, you see. It is surprising how much one can do in a quiet hour!”

      “Is Galloway out?”

      Arthur pointed with his pen to the door of Mr. Galloway’s private room, to indicate that he was in it. “He is writing letters.”

      “I say, Channing, there’s positively nothing left to do,” went on Roland, casting his eyes over the desk. “Here are these leases, but they are not wanted until to-morrow. Who says we can’t work in this office?”

      Arthur laughed good-naturedly, to think of the small amount, out of that day’s work, which had fallen to Roland’s share.

      Some time elapsed. Mr. Galloway came into their room from his own to consult a “Bradshaw,” which lay on the shelf, alongside Jenkins’s desk. He held in his hand a very closely-written letter. It was of large, letter-paper size, and appeared to be filled to the utmost of its four pages. While he was looking at the book, the cathedral clock chimed the three-quarters past two, and the bell rang for divine service.

      “It can never be that time of day!” exclaimed Mr. Galloway, in consternation, as he took out his watch. “Sixteen minutes to three! and I am a minute slow! How has the time passed? I ought to have been at—”

      Mr. Galloway brought his words to a standstill, apparently too absorbed in the railway guide to conclude them. Roland Yorke, who had a free tongue, even with his master, filled up the pause.

      “Were you going out, sir?”

      “Is that any business of yours, Mr. Roland? Talking won’t fill in that lease, sir.”

      “The lease is not in a hurry, sir,” returned incorrigible Roland. But he held his tongue then, and bent his head over his work.

      Mr. Galloway dipped his pen in the ink, and copied something from “Bradshaw” СКАЧАТЬ