Tommy and Co.

Clodd was the only one who did not approve of him.

“How did you get hold of him?” asked Clodd one afternoon, he and Peter alone in the office.

“He came. He came in the usual way,” explained Peter.

“What do you know about him?”

“Nothing. What is there to know? One doesn’t ask for a character with a journalist.”

“No, I suppose that wouldn’t work. Found out anything about him since?”

“Nothing against him. Why so suspicious of everybody?”

“Because you are just a woolly lamb and want a dog to look after you. Who is he? On a first night he gives away his stall and sneaks into the pit. When you send him to a picture-gallery, he dodges the private view and goes on the first shilling day. If an invitation comes to a public dinner, he asks me to go and eat it for him and tell him what it’s all about. That doesn’t suggest the frank and honest journalist, does it?”

“It is unusual, it certainly is unusual,” Peter was bound to admit.

“I distrust the man,” said Clodd. “He’s not our class. What is he doing here?”

“I will ask him, Clodd; I will ask him straight out.”

“And believe whatever he tells you.”

“No, I shan’t.”

“Then what’s the good of asking him?”

“Well, what am I to do?” demanded the bewildered Peter.

“Get rid of him,” suggested Clodd.

“Get rid of him?”

“Get him away! Don’t have him in and out of the office all day long-looking at her with those collie-dog eyes of his, arguing art and poetry with her in that cushat-dove voice of his. Get him clean away – if it isn’t too late already.”

“Nonsense,” said Peter, who had turned white, however. “She’s not that sort of girl.”

“Not that sort of girl!” Clodd had no patience with Peter Hope, and told him so. “Why are there never inkstains on her fingers now? There used to be. Why does she always keep a lemon in her drawer? When did she last have her hair cut? I’ll tell you if you care to know – the week before he came, five months ago. She used to have it cut once a fortnight: said it tickled her neck. Why does she jump on people when they call her Tommy and tell them that her name is Jane? It never used to be Jane. Maybe when you’re a bit older you’ll begin to notice things for yourself.”

Clodd jammed his hat on his head and flung himself down the stairs.

Peter, slipping out a minute later, bought himself an ounce of snuff.

“Fiddle-de-dee!” said Peter as he helped himself to his thirteenth pinch. “Don’t believe it. I’ll sound her. I shan’t say a word – I’ll just sound her.”

Peter stood with his back to the fire. Tommy sat at her desk, correcting proofs of a fanciful story: The Man Without a Past.

“I shall miss him,” said Peter; “I know I shall.”

“Miss whom?” demanded Tommy.

“Danvers,” sighed Peter. “It always happens so. You get friendly with a man; then he goes away – abroad, back to America, Lord knows where. You never see him again.”

Tommy looked up. There was trouble in her face.

“How do you spell ‘harassed’?” questioned Tommy! “two r’s or one.”

“One r,” Peter informed her, “two s’s.”

“I thought so.” The trouble passed from Tommy’s face.

“You don’t ask when he’s going, you don’t ask where he’s going,” complained Peter. “You don’t seem to be interested in the least.”

“I was going to ask, so soon as I had finished correcting this sheet,” explained Tommy. “What reason does he give?”

Peter had crossed over and was standing where he could see her face illumined by the lamplight.

“It doesn’t upset you – the thought of his going away, of your never seeing him again?”

“Why should it?” Tommy answered his searching gaze with a slightly puzzled look. “Of course, I’m sorry. He was becoming useful. But we couldn’t expect him to stop with us always, could we?”

Peter, rubbing his hands, broke into a chuckle. “I told him ’twas all fiddlesticks. Clodd, he would have it you were growing to care for the fellow.”

“For Dick Danvers?” Tommy laughed. “Whatever put that into his head?”

“Oh, well, there were one or two little things that we had noticed.”

“We?”

“I mean that Clodd had noticed.”

I’m glad it was Clodd that noticed them, not you, dad, thought Tommy to herself. They’d have been pretty obvious if you had noticed them.

“It naturally made me anxious,” confessed Peter. “You see, we know absolutely nothing of the fellow.”

“Absolutely nothing,” agreed Tommy.

“He may be a man of the highest integrity. Personally, I think he is. I like him. On the other hand, he may be a thorough-paced scoundrel. I don’t believe for a moment that he is, but he may be. Impossible to say.”

“Quite impossible,” agreed Tommy.

“Considered merely as a journalist, it doesn’t matter. He writes well. He has brains. There’s an end of it.”

“He is very painstaking,” agreed Tommy.

“Personally,” added Peter, “I like the fellow.” Tommy had returned to her work.

Of what use was Peter in a crisis of this kind? Peter couldn’t scold. Peter couldn’t bully. The only person to talk to Tommy as Tommy knew she needed to be talked to was one Jane, a young woman of dignity with sense of the proprieties.