They had saved him from dilettanteism, and whatever he wrote in future
would owe something warm and kindly to the years he had spent with them.

His very desk took on a pathetic expression, as of a place that was so
soon to know him no more for ever; and Mr. Smith, wrangling over
wet-traps and cesspools at the counter, just as on the first day he had
heard him, almost moved him to tears. Perhaps in ten years' time, were
he to come back, he would find him still at his post, fervidly engaged
in the same altercations, with only a little additional greyness at the
temples to mark the lapse of time.

And Jenkins would still be sitting in the little screened-off cupboard,
with "cashier" painted on the glass window. As three o'clock approached,
he would still be heard loudly counting his cash and shovelling the gold
into wash-leather bags, and the silver into little paper-bags marked £5
apiece, in a wild rush to reach the bank before it closed.

And would the same good fellows, a little more serious, because long
since married, be cracking jokes and loafing near the fire-guard, in
some rare safe hour, of the afternoon when all the partners were out, to
make a spring for the desks, as the carefully learnt tread of one or
another of those partners followed the opening of the front door.

The very work that he hated seemed to wear an unwonted look of
tenderness. Who would keep the books he had kept--with something of his
father's neatness; who would look after the accounts of "the Rev. Thomas
Salthouse," or take charge of "Ex'ors James Shuttleworth, Esqre"?

Of course, it was absurd--absurd, perhaps, just because it was human.
For was he not going to be free, free to fulfil his dreams, free to