“This comes of your attempting to disobey me!” said she, when he had come round again. “I wonder what would become of you poor, soft mortals of men, if you were let have your own way! There’s no office for you to day, Jenkins.” Very peremptorily spoke she. But, lest he should attempt the same again, she determined to put it out of his power. Opening a closet, she thrust every article of his clothing into it, not leaving him so much as a waistcoat, turned the key, and put it into her pocket. Poor Jenkins watched her with despairing eyes, not venturing to remonstrate. “There,” said she, speaking amiably in her glow of satisfaction: “you can go to the office now--if you like. I’ll not stop you; but you’ll have to march through the streets leaving your clothes in that closet.” Under these difficulties Jenkins did not quite see his way to get there. Mrs. Jenkins went instead, catching Mr. Roland Yorke just upon his arrival. “What’s up, that Jenkins is not here?” began Roland, before she could speak. “Jenkins is not in a fit state to get out of his bed, and I have come to tell Mr. Galloway so,” replied she. Roland Yorke’s face grew to twice its usual length at the news. “I say, though, that will never do, Mrs. Jenkins. What’s to become of this office?” “The office must do the best it can without him. _He’s_ not coming to it.” “_I_ can’t manage it,” said Roland, in consternation. “I should go dead, if I had to do Jenkins’s work, and my own as well.” “He’ll go dead, unless he takes some rest in time, and gets a little good nursing. I should like to know how I am to nurse him, if he is down here all day?” “That’s not the question,” returned Roland, feeling excessively blank. “The question is, how the office, and I, and Galloway are to get on without him? Couldn’t he come in a sedan?” “Yes, he can; if he likes to come without his clothes,” retorted Mrs. Jenkins. “I have taken care to lock _them_ up.” “Locked his clothes up!” repeated Roland, in wonder. “What’s that for?” “Because, as long as he has a bit of life in him, he’ll use it to drag himself down here,” answered Mrs. Jenkins, tartly. “That’s why. He was getting up to come this morning, defying me and every word I said against it, when he fell down on the bed in a fainting fit. I thought it time to lock his things up then.” “Upon my word, I don’t know what’s to be done,” resumed Roland, growing quite hot with dismay and perplexity, at the prospect of some extra work for himself. “Look here!” exhibiting the parchments on Jenkins’s desk, all so neatly left--“here’s an array! Jenkins did not intend to stay away, when he left those last night, I know.”