“They are nicely kept,” he said; “they are kept very nicely indeed. I may say that the other applicants, notwithstanding the character of their testimonials, had not a scrupulous regard for personal decency. It would give me great pleasure personally to see you in the counting-house of Crumpett and Hawker”--there was an accession of pride to the mellifluous accents of Mr. Octavius Crumpett--“for you strike one as an exceedingly _gentleman-like_ and _well-conditioned_ boy, but in a physical sense nature does not seem to have been so much your friend. However, Mr. Jordan, perhaps you will be good enough to touch that bell.” From his station before the fire Mr. Octavius Crumpett indicated a bell on his table; and although Mr. Jordan had never touched a bell before in his life, he was able to understand what was required of him, for now all his faculties seemed to be strung up to a point of almost perilous receptivity; and, further, he was able to reel across the carpet, and, by a miraculous intervention on the part of providence, was able to make the bell give forth an audible sound. The visible and actual proof of that which he had accomplished was furnished by the entrance of the undersized and wizened boy. “Mr. Dodson,” said Mr. Octavius Crumpett, “I shall be obliged if you will ask Mr. Walkinshaw to have the kindness to come up-stairs.” Mr. Dodson withdrew with the air of an ambassador. The boy’s gaze was one of intense entreaty as he looked through the sacred mists which veiled the Olympian form of Mr. Octavius Crumpett. That emblem of a monumental culture still stood with the skirts of his coat outspread before the fire. Its genial warmth seemed still to make him purr and simper in every crease and fold of his chaste portliness. At every breath he drew he seemed to approximate more nearly to an extraordinarily fine and handsome feline, which finds itself in unusually luxurious surroundings. His meditations, which must have been those of an optimist, were curtailed by the entrance of a thin, formal, intellectual, yet slightly melancholy gentleman, whose refined and sensitive features were yet stamped with the simper of a large content. Perhaps this cachet of those who take a large view of things had not always been upon that refined countenance, but many years’ association with a foremost practitioner of the amenities of life had had an indelible effect. Habit had become nature. Mr. Walter Pater Walkinshaw might once have had his modest doubts as became any other private gentleman; but he was as fundamentally sound as the great house of Crumpett and Hawker itself. Of the simper there could be no doubt; for in mien, in manner, in deportment he was designed to suggest that, like the wizened boy himself, he had been modelled carefully upon a superb original which at this moment was standing with its coat-tails held away from the fire.