So, as one tells the dentist, “I’m ready—_now!_” before a wrench, I picked my minute and was holding out my hand to him as he turned from the waitress. I must say it first. “Well, good-bye, Mr. Waters!” He didn’t seem to hear that. “Miss Trant, I find I’ve got to get down to the City at once.” “Oh, yes?” (It sounded all right, I think.) “Then here we part company.” Sharply concise, in his old orders-for-the-day voice, came Still Waters’ “No. If you don’t mind, I want you to come on with me.” With him? And presently I was whizzing down King’s Road to Sloane Square in a taxi beside him, wondering, as even he had never made me wonder yet, what this further unexpectedness might mean. He said nothing. He was intent upon the paper he had taken out again. Business, of course—but why take me with him? At the post office he stopped the cab, got out and strode to the telephone, then out again. “As quick as you can,” he told the driver, “to the Near Oriental Shipping Company’s offices, Leadenhall Street.” CHAPTER XXVIII THE FIRST GLEAM At the office, which to my experience seemed to belong to a previous existence, but to my eyes seemed only of yesterday, every familiar object was in its place and unchanged. The first of these was the figure of Mr. Dundonald. He confronted us just outside the door of the Principal’s office, and after a bow to me which a week ago would have made me long to shriek with amusement, came forward with his most _affairé_ manner and said something, gravely and in a low voice, to his chief. “I know. Can’t attend to it now. Presently!” the Governor put him aside, but also seriously. “When Mr. Albert Waters comes in; I’ve ’phoned him. Send the boy to me when I ring.” Then he opened the door of his room. Here, too, all looked exactly as it had done that afternoon four months and an eternity ago! The light and spaciousness of it, the mile-walk stretch of deep red carpet, the round-topped mahogany clock on the wide mantelshelf, that big desk, bare but for the turnover date ticket upon it, his revolving chair in front of it, and that other plump green-morocco-covered arm-chair that he had first pointed at, that afternoon, for me to take. He pointed to it now. “Sit down, please.” Down I sat, watching him as he turned to the desk. He was writing rapidly telegraph-forms. Then his hand went out to the well-known row of electric bell-pushes on his desk. One thing there, after all, was new: the extending bracket-telephone. Ah, yes; he’d put that in his letter.... The equally well-known sharp little Cockney face of Harold appeared at the door; the boy came up and took the forms, which the Governor had gathered into two bundles. “These to go off at once. These to be coded.” “Yessir.” I sat there wondering. If this business of his meant so much haste, why had he made Mr. Dundonald wait for it? Above all, what had I to do with it that I should be there at all?