Then we parted, Ezekiel, as he afterwards told me, to the happy contemplation of our closer friendship, and myself, as I walked home, to the sombre consideration of the possibilities with which I had been presented. I had scarcely been so occupied, however, for ten minutes when I suddenly became aware of the odour of alcohol, and to my infinite horror found myself being embraced by the show-room manager from Paternoster Row. “Why, ShAugustus,” he said. “Fansheen you.” Involuntarily I recoiled from him, but he came after me. “Fansheen you,” he repeated. “Hahu?” And having kissed me, he sat down on the pavement. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XIV Person and character of Mr. Archibald Maidstone. Irreverent attitude towards the firm’s publications. Would-be laxity of two constables. Their tardy performance of an obvious duty. Deplorable condition of my Sunday trousers. Their effect on Miss Botterill and Mr. Chrysostom Lorton. The arrival and influence of the Reverend Eugene Cake. Mr. Maidstone is dismissed and I succeed him. Complete discomfiture of his three elder children. I HAVE said that he sat down, and even had that been all, it would have been a sufficiently unpleasant encounter, although, as I had instantly seen, it ought certainly to issue in my own immediate commercial advancement. But he did more, for so firmly did he grip my arm that I was compelled to sit down beside him, with what reluctance will be the better imagined when I have briefly described his person and character. By name Archibald Maidstone, he was a tall, gaunt man with high cheek-bones and a grey moustache, and in his earlier life he had held some sort of position in the British mercantile marine. An accident at sea, however, had deprived him of one of his eyes as well as of the two middle fingers of his left hand, and for some time he had been the proprietor of a small and unsuccessful marine store. He had then become a commercial traveller for a firm of grocers that had subsequently failed, and had finally, at the age of forty-one, obtained a minor position in the business of Mr. Chrysostom Lorton.