“Who’s to know?” answered Roland, who was in an explosive temper. “_I_ don’t. If Galloway thinks to put it all on my back, it’s a scandalous shame! I never could do it, or the half of it. Jenkins worked like a horse when we were busy. He’d hang his head down over his desk, and never lift it for two hours at a stretch!--you know he would not. Fancy my doing that! I should get brain fever before a week was out.” Arthur smiled at this. “Is Jenkins much worse?” he inquired. “I don’t believe he’s worse at all,” returned Roland, tartly. “He’d have come this morning, as usual, fast enough, only she locked up his clothes.” “Who?” said Arthur, in surprise. “She. That agreeable lady who has the felicity of owning Jenkins. She was here this morning as large as life, giving an account of her doings, without a blush. She locked up his things, she says, to keep him in bed. I’d be even with her, I know, were I Jenkins. I’d put on her flounces, but what I’d come out, if I wanted to. Rather short they’d be for him, though.” “I shall go, Roland. My being here only hinders you.” “As if that made any difference worth counting! Look here!--piles and piles of parchments! I and Galloway could never get through them, hindered or not hindered. _I_ am not going to work over hours! _I_ won’t kill myself with hard labour. There’s Port Natal, thank goodness, if the screw does get put upon me too much!” Arthur did not reply. It made little difference to Roland: whether encouraged or not, talk he would. “I _have_ heard of folks being worked beyond their strength; and that will be my case, if one may judge by present appearances. It’s too bad of Jenkins!” Arthur spoke up: he did not like to hear blame, even from Roland Yorke, cast upon patient, hard-working Jenkins. “You should not say it, Roland. It is not Jenkins’s fault.” “It is his fault. What does he have such a wife for? She keeps Jenkins under her thumb, just as Galloway keeps me. She locked up his clothes, and then told him he might come here without them, if he liked: my belief is, she’ll be sending him so, some day. Jenkins ought to put her down. He’s big enough.” “He would be sure to come here, if he were equal to it,” said Arthur. “He! Of course he would!” angrily retorted Roland. “He’d crawl here on all fours, but what he’d come; only she won’t let him. She knows it too. She said this morning that he’d come when he was in his coffin! I should like to see it arrive!” Arthur had been casting a glance at the papers. They were unusually numerous, and he began to think with Roland that he and Mr. Galloway would not be able to get through them unaided. Most certainly they would not, at Roland’s present rate of work. “It is a pity you are not a quick copyist,” he said. “I dare say it is!” sarcastically rejoined Roland, beginning to play at ball with the wafer-box. “I never was made for work; and if--”