Her eyes filled with tears, and she mopped them with her pocket-handkerchief. ‘That’s one way of looking at it, certainly,’ exclaimed Jabez, filling the glasses and handing them round. ‘Have a glass of port?’ ‘Thank you,’ said Miss Jackson; and clutching a glass she dropped a tear into it, and tossed it off. Miss Jackson’s brother also took a glass with a trembling hand, and got it to his lips after spilling half of it down his white waistcoat, and turning the colour of the liquid itself in his agony, ‘Now let’s be jolly,’ exclamed Jabez, shining benignantly on everybody. ‘Here’s Georgina’s jolly good health, and a many of ‘em.’ Bess and George duly honoured the sentiment, and Georgina bowed gracefully to everybody, including Miss Jackson’s brother, who observed the salutation just as he was drinking, and, swallowing his wine in a hurry in order to bow politely, let it all go the wrong way, and choked and coughed for a good five minutes, crowning his misfortunes, in the confusion which seized him in consequence, by wiping his brow with the antimacassar instead of his pocket-handkerchief. Gradually the little company settled into groups. Miss Jackson, Bess, and Miss Duck plunged into trivialities about Mrs. Jones’s baby next door, Mrs. Brown’s bad husband, the price of provisions, and the state of the weather; Miss Jackson’s brother made a group by himself in a far corner with an album, over which he bent with the earnestness of a student, and looked at the portraits upside down for a quarter of an hour without knowing it; and Jabez and George started a little conversation which we are ungallant enough to imagine will be of more interest to the reader than Miss Jackson’s jeremiads, Bess’s mechanical ‘Yeses’ and ‘Noes,’ or Miss Duck’s choice morsels of local gossip. ‘And so you really like your new place. Well, I’m glad of that,’ said Mr. Duck. ‘Good places ain’t easy found in the City.’ ‘Mine’s a capital place, I assure you,’ answered George. ‘There’s really very little to do.’ ‘Let’s see, Smith & Co. is the firm, isn’t it? What are they?’ asked Jabez, presently. ‘I don’t know, exactly.’ ‘Where are their offices?’ ‘Well,’ said George, ‘they have so many.’ ‘Many offices! What do you mean?’ ‘Why, you see, I’m not attached to any office. One week I go to their office in Fenchurch Street, and perhaps the next I’m at Little Britain. This week I’m on at the office in the Borough.’ ‘Do you have many customers come in?’ ‘No. Now and then a gentleman comes to see the manager—that’s all.’ ‘It’s a queer situation, anyway,’ said Jabez. ‘I wonder what they can be?’ ‘I don’t know,’ answered George; ‘but the manager is a most respectable old gentleman, and very kind, and I get my money to the minute.’ Jabez registered a mental note to make some inquiries about the firm of Smith & Co., who had so many offices. And then the conversation turned upon Mr. Jabez’s own line of business.