Mr. Lynn strolled off with a puzzled frown upon his forehead, and
Alfred Burton, with a slight gesture of aversion, pushed open the
swinging doors which led into the offices of Messrs. Waddington &
Forbes.



CHAPTER II

A TRANSFORMATION

Burton stood for a moment upon the threshold of the office, looking
around him. A new and peculiar distaste for these familiar surroundings
seemed suddenly to have sprung into life. For the first time he
realized the intense ugliness of this scene of his daily labors. The
long desk, ink-splashed and decrepit, was covered with untidy piles of
papers, some of them thick with dust; the walls were hung with
seedy-looking files and an array of tattered bills; there were cobwebs
in every corner, gaps in the linoleum floor-covering. In front of the
office-boy--a youth about fourteen years of age, who represented the
remaining clerical staff of the establishment--were pinned up several
illustrations cut out from _Comic Cuts_, the _Police News_, and various
other publications of a similar order. As Burton looked around him, his
distaste grew. It seemed impossible that he had ever existed for an
hour amid such an environment. The prospect of the future was suddenly
hugely distasteful.

Very slowly he changed his coat and climbed on to his worn horsehair
stool, without exchanging his usual facetious badinage with the
remaining member of the staff. The office-boy, who had thought of