“Pity,” said Mr. Dodson, as he selected a cigarette from the silver case with the unmistakable air of the connoisseur. “Ought to. Great thing for the nerves. Though perhaps you are not troubled with ’em. I shouldn’t say myself that you lived at very high pressure.” At the end of Fleet Street master and pupil parted company. “Ta ta, old boy,” said Mr. Dodson, with a genial wave of the hand. “I go round the corner to the station. Nice time for the 7.50 to Peckham. That’s your ’bus--the green one. Ta ta; one of these days we will do a music-hall together.” Mr. Dodson stood to watch the frail figure enter the green ’bus. “Absolutely the rummest kid I ever struck,” said he. “Fancy a thing like that able to read Homer in the original! Well, I will say this--he don’t put on side about it like most chaps would.” With this reflection the philosopher turned the corner, immediately to engage in a war of words, in which he did not come off second best, with the driver of a “growler,” who nearly ran over him as he stepped somewhat unwarily off the pavement. XXI In the course of the following week an announcement was made which marked an epoch in the history of the great publishing house of Crumpett and Hawker. However, before this event had burgeoned forth upon the counting-house staff, Mr. M. Arnold Dodson, with whose individual destiny it was concerned, continued to live in that condition of soul-distraction, to which it would seem even the most philosophic minds are susceptible, which is known as hope deferred. All the week Mr. Dodson had waited in vain to be summoned into the presence of authority, to receive the seal of official recognition to which he felt his mature talents were unquestionably entitled. He had set his heart upon the dethronement of young Davis. To that other accomplished worldling, who in mere point of age was a year older than himself, he never referred without the prefix “young.” But the misdemeanour of which that successful adventurer had been convicted, of smoking in the room of the head of the firm, had not as yet borne the fruit that Mr. Dodson had confidently predicted. Mr. Davis was still enthroned in high places, triumphant still in his original deceit; every morning he appended his signature in the time-book, G. Eliot Davis, 9.15, not the least among the Olympians whose seat was on the second storey; while Mr. M. Arnold Dodson, in every way his superior in moral and mental attainment, still languished in the comparative obscurity of the counting-house below.