He was a little shaken, however, by his reception at the office of Messrs. Spender and Diggs, and by their instant recognition of John’s name, and their curious questions on the subject. Had the plan been rejected by Barretts, they asked--and he did not even know what ‘Barretts’ meant. He was still more dismayed when he found (though he ought to have known very well it must be so) that no answer would be given him on the subject till the papers were examined, and that it would be necessary that Sandford should come himself to elucidate and explain them. There was quite a little excitement in the office, evidently, about Sandford’s work and its presentation there. The partner who seemed to him to be Diggs (he could not tell why, from his appearance), came and looked over the shoulder of the partner who must be Spender, and one or two others were called into the council and questions asked as to whether young Sandford had left Barretts, whether there had been a quarrel, what had happened. The ignorance he showed about all this, brought suspicious looks upon him, looks which disturbed all his calculations: for it had never occurred to him that any suspicion could attach to him in respect of a document written in his own hand, and which by that very fact surely belonged to him, more or less. He was glad at last to get away, feeling a certain distrust involved in the questions that were addressed to him, and beginning to wonder what they could do to him if it were discovered to be without John’s permission that the papers were brought here. Pooh! he said to himself, but only when he had got away--nothing could be done to him; it was no wrong to John or anyone. He had a right, a moral right, to the work of his own hands: and it was in kindness he had done it; kindness qualified by a percentage which is what the very best of friends demand. But if he was disturbed and troubled by this _contretemps_, Joe, who was really throughout the matter his inspiring influence, was much more so. He was angry and disappointed beyond description. He had expected, being so much more ignorant than his principal, money immediate, a sum down, for the papers which young Sandford had said were his fortune. He was furious with the feebleness of his ‘mate,’ who had left those papers without getting anything for them. ‘I’d not a’ bin such a blooming fool,’ said Joe, whose adjectives are generally left out in this record. ‘I’d a’ up and spoken. Money down or ye gets nothin’ from me. Lor, if I had a ’ansom coat to my back like you, and could speak like as them swells would listen to me, d’ye think I’d a’ come back empty-handed like that?’