Mr Simon Loggerheads said to himself, as he saw the door
move on its hinges, that Miss Morfe must have discovered a treasure of a
servant who, when she had nothing else to do, spent her time on the
inner door-mat waiting to admit possible visitors--even on Friday night.
Nevertheless, Mr Simon Loggerheads regretted that prompt opening, as one
regrets the prompt opening of the door of a dentist.
And it was no servant who stood in front of him, under the flickering
beam of the lobby-lamp. It was Mary Morfe herself. The simple
explanation was that she had just sped her brother and Eva Harracles,
and had remained in the lobby for the purpose of ascertaining by means
of her finger whether the servant had, as usual, forgotten to dust the
tops of the picture-frames.
"Oh!" said Mr Loggerheads, when he saw Mary Morfe. For the cashier of
the Bursley branch of the Birmingham and Sheffield Bank it was not a
very able speech, but it was all he could accomplish.
And Miss Mary Morfe said:
"Oh!"
She was thirty-eight, and he was quite that (for the Bank mentioned
does not elevate its men to the august situation of cashier under less
than twenty years' service), and yet they neither of them had enough
worldliness to behave in a reasonable manner.
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