"There's your tea," she said roughly; "and look here, I'm not going to wait on you. Bring the mug to the kitchen when you've done, and you'll have to fetch it in future." I looked up at her very wistfully as she scowled at me, but I did not speak. "Sulky, eh?" she said. "You'll soon get that taken out of you here, I can tell you." With these words she whisked herself out of the office, the swing-door creaked dismally and banged behind her, and I was left to enjoy my meal. At first I felt that I could not touch it, but I was faint and hungry, and after a few mouthfuls a boy's young healthy appetite asserted itself, and I drank all the mean thin tea and finished the bread and butter. Then I remembered that I was to take the things back to the kitchen. Where was the kitchen, and dare I leave that stool without Mr Blakeford's orders? I felt that I dare not, and therefore sat there patiently gazing about the room, my eyes resting longest on those bills which told of sales of furniture, as I wondered whether those who had belonged to the furniture had died and left a son alone in the world, as I seemed to be just then. There was a clock, I found, in one corner--an old Dutch clock--that ticked away in a very silent, reserved fashion, giving further every hour a curious running-down noise, as if it were about to strike; but though I watched it patiently as the minute-hand passed on, it never fulfilled the expectations given, but confined itself to its soft subdued _tick, tick, tick, tick_, hour after hour. Seven, eight, nine, ten had been marked off by that clock, and still I sat there, waiting, and wondering whether I was to sleep there as well as to have my meals; and then I heard a door bang, the sound of a footstep, and with a great tin candlestick in his hand Mr Blakeford entered the room. CHAPTER FOUR. I BECOME A LAWYER'S CLERK. "This way!" he said abruptly, and there was a curious look in his face that I could not understand. "Here, hold this," he cried, thrusting the candlestick into my hand; and I held it trembling as he crossed unsteadily to the gas-jet, turned it down, and then strode out of the office. "There!" he said, opening a door, "up there; and get down in good time. You'll have to clean the boots and things." "Up there" was up a flight of steps which led into a low sloping-ceiled chamber that had been evidently meant for a lumber-room, but had now been fitted up with an old stump bedstead with a coloured counterpane, a little corner washstand with a cracked jug, a strip of carpet, and a three-legged painted chest of drawers, which had gone down at one corner, and left a corresponding leg slightly raised in the air. The place was cold and miserable, chilling to a degree, but it was clean; and as I looked round I was surprised by seeing on a chair a heap of my clothes and a brush and comb. I had just finished looking round when I heard a noise below.