Perhaps even now this jointed merchandise was only worth
two hundred pounds! And "they"--the shadowy directors, who could not
kick a ball fifty feet and who would probably turn sick if they broke a
leg--"they" paid him four pounds a week for being the hero of a quarter
of a million of people! He was the chief magnet to draw fifteen thousand
sixpences and shillings of a Saturday afternoon into a company's cash
box, and here he sat splitting his head over fewer sixpences and
shillings than would fill a half-pint pot! Jos, you ought in justice to
have been Jose, with a thin red necktie down your breast (instead of a
line of mud up your back), and embroidered breeches on those miraculous
legs, and an income of a quarter of a million pesetas, and the
languishing acquiescence of innumerable mantillas. Every moment you were
getting older and stiffer; every moment was bringing nearer the moment
when young men would reply curtly to their doddering elders: "Jos
Myatt--who was '_e?_"
The putting away of the ledger, the ink, the pen and the money was as
exasperating as their taking out had been. Then Jos, always too large
for the room, crossed the tiled floor and mended the fire.
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