In the outer office, the clerks consumed walnuts in quantity, pelted each other with the shells, and looked at their watches, or the clock half a dozen times in the course of an hour. Business was, in a word, as bad as the weather, and that could not by any possibility have been worse. The sky, as regarded the physical world, was leaden; the streets, sloppy; the air, raw; east winds prevalent; in the City, things were drooping; stocks, heavy; rhubarb, a drug; indigo, blue; shares, flat; corn, falling; sugars, depressed; money, dear. The only branch of commerce, the vigour of which did not seem impaired, was that of advertising. People advertised their wares in despair, thinking, if a smash were to come, they might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb,—as well face Basinghall Street with a creditable list of debts as go through the Court for a few hundreds. It was sink, or swim, with a vast number of persons during the earlier months of the year in question, and yet the papers never were so full of advertisements. The _Times_ came out with daily supplements, and the _Telegraph_ with its extra sheet; the _Standard_ curtailed its usual quantity of letterpress, and the weeklies raised their prices per line, and would not guarantee immediate insertion. Not to be out of the fashion, the Protector Bread Company, Limited, announced each morning in the columns of the daily papers, “that pure bread was obtainable nowhere excepting at the depôts of the Company;” and every now and then a copy of an analysis from Daniel Smith, Esq., M.B., Ph.D., M.A., F.R.S., &c., Professor of Chemistry in the College of the Home Counties’ Hospital, and Medical Officer of Health for Belgravia, was appended, stating that he had found a loaf of the Company’s bread to contain so much of so many things, and to be perfectly free from a certain number of other things; that all articles used were of the best quality, and that he considered the process of manufacture employed at the Stangate Works, to be highly cleanly, and satisfactory. But all this could not make the bread sell. The tide of fortune had turned, and the waters of success were ebbing away from the goodly ship “Protector” more rapidly than they had ever flowed in on the commercial shore, where that once promising vessel now lay almost a wreck. There was not a creature connected with it, however, who would admit that the venture was even in danger; and yet every person’s temper became, if Arthur Dudley’s report were to be believed, unbearable. His own temper, never the most pliable, was severely tried; and now, instead of longing for each morning to dawn, in order that the business of the Protector might advance still further towards success, he hated to see day break—hated leaving his breakfast-room and going downstairs to meet those unpleasantnesses which had become of hourly, and momentary occurrence in his life.