"They ought to have told you," said Hamilton sympathetically. "Now
come and have some food."
But Bones refused. He was adamant. He would sit there and starve. He
did not say as much, but he hinted that, when Hamilton returned, his
famished and lifeless form would be found lying limply across the desk.
Hamilton went out to lunch alone, hurried through his meal, and came
back to find Bones alive but unhappy.
He sat making faces at the table, muttering incoherent words,
gesticulating at times in the most terrifying manner, and finally threw
himself back into his deep chair, his hands thrust into his trousers
pockets, the picture of dejection and misery.
It was three o'clock when Miss Marguerite Whitland returned breathless,
and, to Bones's jealous eye, unnecessarily agitated.
"Come, come, dear old miss," he said testily. "Bring your book. I
wish to dictate an important letter. Enjoyed your lunch?"
The last question was asked in so threatening a tone that the girl
almost jumped.
"Yes--no," she said. "Not very much really."
"Ha, ha!" said Bones, insultingly sceptical, and she went red, flounced
into her room, and returned, after five minutes, a haughty and distant
young woman.
"I don't think I want to dictate, dear old--dear young typewriter," he
said unhappily. "Leave me, please."
"Really, my dear Bones," protested Hamilton, when the girl had gone
back, scarlet-faced to her office, "you're making a perfect ass of
yourself. If a girl cannot go to lunch with her cousin----"
Bones jumped up from his chair, shrugged his shoulders rapidly, and
forced a hideous grin.
"What does it matter to me, dear old Ham?" he asked. "Don't think I'm
worried about a little thing like a typewriter going out to lunch.
Pooh! Absurd! Tommy rot! No, my partner, I don't mind--in fact, I
don't care a----"
"Jot," said Hamilton, with the gesture of an outraged bishop.
"Of course not," said Bones wildly. "What does it matter to me?
Delighted that young typewriter should have a cousin, and all that sort
of thing!"
"Then what the dickens is the matter with you?" asked Hamilton.
"Nothing," said Bones, and laughed more wildly than ever.
Relationships between Mr. Augustus Tibbetts, Managing Director of
Schemes Limited, and Miss Marguerite Whitland, his heaven-sent
secretary, were strained to the point of breaking that afternoon. She
went away that night without saying good-bye, and Bones, in a condition
of abject despair, walked home to Devonshire Street, and was within a
dozen yards of his flat, when he remembered that he had left his
motor-car in the City, and had to take a cab back to fetch it.
"Bones," said Hamilton the next morning, "do you realise the horrible
gloom which has come over this office?"
"Gloom, dear old Ham?" said the dark-eyed Bones. He had spent the
night writing letters to Marguerite, and had exhausted all the
stationery in sight in the process. "Gloom, old thing! Good gracious,
no! Nobody is gloomy here!"