"Shall I help you up to bed?"

"I'll go to bed when I've a mind to," Jeremy retorted. "I am not under
cover yet by a long reach." To establish his well-being he rose and moved
to the secretary, where he got a fresh cheroot, and lighted it with
slightly trembling fingers. He grumbled inarticulately, remembering his
own exploits in the carrying of sail and record runs under the bluff bows
of the Honorable John Company itself. The ebb tide, he thought, returning
to William's figure and its amplification by himself. So much that had
been good sweeping out to sea never to return....Gerrit long overdue.

Once more he shook himself free of numbing dread; automatically he had
fallen back into the passage from the secretary to the hall door. He saw
that he had worn threadbare a narrow strip where his feet had so often
pressed. It would be necessary for him to see about a fresh case of
cheroots soon, primes, too; they needn't try to put him off with the
second quality. He was put off a great deal lately; people pretended to
be listening to him, and all the time their thoughts were somewhere else,
either that or they were merely politely concealing the opinion that he
was out of date, of no importance.

His family were always providing against his fatigue or excitement; at
the countinghouse the gravest problems, he was certain, were withheld
from him. At the occurrence of this possibility a fresh indignation
poured through his brain. Fuming and tramping up and down he determined
that to-morrow he would show any of the clerks who didn't attend to his
wishes or counsel that he was still senior partner of Ammidon, Ammidon
and Saltonstone.