He was quite another man now, closing the great ledger with a
bang; shouldering it as Moses did the Tables of the Law, and
carrying it into the big vault behind him--big enough to back a
buggy into had the great door been wider--shooting the bolts,
whirring the combination into so hopeless and confused a state
that should even the most daring and expert of burglars have tried
his hand or his jimmy on its steel plating he would have given up
in despair (that is unless big Patrick fell asleep--an unheard-of
occurrence) and all with such spring and joyousness of movement
that had I not seen him like this many times before I would have
been deluded into the belief that the real Peter had been locked
up in the dismal vault with the musty books and that an entirely
different kind of Peter was skipping about outside.

But that was nothing to the air with which he swept his papers
into the drawer of his desk, brushed away the crumpled sheets upon
which he had figured his balance, and darted to the washstand
behind the narrow partition. Nor could it be compared to the way
in which he stripped off his black bombazine office-coat with its
baggy pockets--quite a disreputable-looking coat I must say--
taking it by the nape of the neck, as if it were some loathsome
object to be got rid of, and hanging it upon a hook behind him;
nor to the way in which he pulled up his shirt sleeves and plunged
his white, long-fingered, delicately modeled hands into the basin,
as if cleanliness were a thing to be welcomed as a part of his
life. These carefully dried, each finger by itself--not forgetting
the small seal ring on the little one--he gave an extra polish to
his glistening pate with the towel, patted his fresh, smooth-
shaven cheeks with an unrumpled handkerchief which he had taken
from his inside pocket, carefully adjusted his white neck-cloth,