was the high carved mantelpiece. The morning itself was historic, for it
was the very morning upon which, President McKinley having expired,
Theodore Roosevelt ascended the throne and inaugurated a new era.
Nevertheless, such was their peculiar time of life that George, a minute
later, was as a fact hanging by his toes from the mantelpiece, while
Lucas urged him to keep the blood out of his head. George had stood on
his hands on a box and lodged his toes on the mantelpiece, and then
raised his hands--and Lucas had softly pushed the box away. George's
watch was dangling against his flushed cheek.

"Put that box back, you cuckoo!" George exploded chokingly.

Then the door opened and Mr. Enwright appeared. Simultaneously some
shillings slipped out of George's pocket and rolled about the floor. The
hour was Mr. Enwright's customary hour of arrival, but he had no fair
excuse for passing through that room instead of proceeding along the
corridor direct to the principals' room. His aspect, as he gazed at
George's hair and at the revealed sateen back of George's waistcoat, was
unusual. Mr. Enwright commonly entered the office full of an intense and
aggrieved consciousness of his own existence--of his insomnia, of the
reaction upon himself of some client's stupidity, of the necessity of
going out again in order to have his chin lacerated by his favourite and
hated Albanian barber. But now he had actually forgotten himself.

"What _is_ this?" he demanded.

Lucas having quickly restored the box, George subsided dangerously
thereon, and arose in a condition much disarrayed and confused, and
beheld Mr. Enwright with shame.