Whether they spent the time thus hoarded in a profitable fashion, is a question of personal definition. It was usually expended in companies of twos or threes, with a pipe and a pot of beer and much spirited talk, in the warm corners of adjacent taverns; and, so long as you don't drink too much, there has perhaps been invented none pleasanter than that old-fashioned way of spending an hour. Certainly, it was the way for ale to taste good, and a pipe to seem the most satisfying of all earthly consolations. It was almost worth the bondage to enjoy the keen relish of the escape. By degrees, though the youngest there, Henry came to be allowed a certain leadership in these sorties of the human element. He made it his business to stimulate these unthrifty instincts, and to fan the welcome sparks of natural idleness; and so successfully that at times there seemed to have entered with him into that gloomy place a certain Bacchic influence, which now and again would prompt his comrades to such daring clutches of animated release, that the spirit of it even pervaded the penetralia of the senior partner's office, with the result that some mishap of truancy would undo the genial work of months, and precipitate upon them for a while the rigours of a ten-fold discipline. It was after such an occasion that, in writing to James Mesurier as to the progress of his son, old Mr. Septimus Lingard had paid Henry one of the proudest compliments of his young days. "I fear that we shall make little of your son Henry," he wrote. "His head seems full of literature, and he is so idle that he is demoralising the whole office." It took Henry more than a year to win that testimonial; but the odds had been so great against him that the wonder is he was ever able to win it at all. Mr. Lingard wrote "demoralise." It was his way of saying "humanise." CHAPTER XI HUMANITY IN HIGH PLACES One day, however, Henry was to make the still more surprising discovery, that not only were the clerks human beings, but that one of the partners--only one of them--was also human. He made this discovery about the senior partner, whose old-world figure and quaint name, Septimus Searle Lingard, had, in spite of his severity, attracted him by a certain musty distinction.