There followed several paragraphs relative to the installation of certain improvements in the office, upon which Mr. Clutterbuck was curiously eager; next, in quite a brief but equally clear passage, was the order--if the merchant were not himself able to attend to the matter by the 25th at latest--to take up 15,000 shares in the Muntsar issue; an investment, the instructions added, on which the fullest particulars would be afforded him, if he were in any doubt, by Messrs. Barnett and Sons. The Confidential Clerk was in very considerable doubt. The word as it stood was meaningless. He sent for Miss Pugh, the shorthand writer, and her notes; they appeared together with hauteur, and the Confidential Clerk, who in humbler days had done his 120 words a minute, carefully examined the outline. It was not very neat, but there was the "Mntsor" right enough. He complained of the vowels, and received from Miss Pugh, whom he openly admired, so sharp a reprimand as silenced him.... Yet his experience assured him that "Mnt" was not an English form. He began to experiment with the vowels. He tried "e" and "a" and made Muntusare, which was nonsense; then he tried "a" and "u"; then "a" and "e"; and suddenly he saw it. In a flash he remembered a friend of his who was employed in the offices of a syndicate; he should surely have guessed! Manatasara! More than once that friend had hinted at the advantage of "setting the ball rolling." More than once had he spoken in flattery of the Confidential Clerk's ascendency over his master and with unmerited contempt of that master's initiative.... He had even let it be known that the introduction of Mr. Clutterbuck's name alone would be regarded with substantial gratitude by Mr. Hatton.... The more he thought of it the more he was determined that Manatasara was the word ... and he needed no help from Barnett and Sons now. He considered the habits of his friend, and remembered that he commonly lunched at the Woolpack. To the Woolpack went the Confidential Clerk a little after two, and found that friend making a book with Natty Timpson, Joe Buller, and the rest upon the approaching but most uncertain Derby. He joined them, drew him aside, briefly told him his business, and asked him how he should proceed. His friend, who was a true friend and a little drunk, conveyed to him, in language which would certainly be tedious here and probably offensive, the extreme pleasure his principals would find in Mr. Clutterbuck's determination: the probability that the Confidential Clerk himself would not go unrewarded. He spoke of his own high hopes; then, as he contemplated the opportunity in all its greatness, it so worked upon his own enthusiasm as to make him insist upon accompanying the reluctant Clerk to the office itself, and introducing him in a flushed but articulate manner to Mr. Hatton's private secretary.