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It was his seventeenth birthday one hot day towards the end of August, and at breakfast his father, without looking up from his paper, said: "I have made arrangements for you with Mr. Aitchinson to enter his office next week. You'll have to work you've been idling long enough."
But Peter showed no emotion. "Very well, father What day do I go?" "Monday nine o'clock." Nothing more was said. At any rate Aitchinson and his red tape and his moral dust would fill the day no time then to dwell on these dark passages and Mrs. Trussit's frightened eyes and the startled jump of the marble clock in the dining-room just before it struck the hour.... And so for weeks it proved.
He had a high falsetto voice, fingers that were always picking, like eager hens, at the buttons on his waistcoat or the little waxed moustache above his mouth, and hair that occupied its time in covering a bald patch that always escaped every design upon it. So much for Mr. Aitchinson. Let him be flattered sufficiently and Peter saw that his way would be easy.
It was a wonderful day and somewhere streams were flowing under dark protecting trees, and the grass was thick in cool hollows and the woods were so dense that no blue sky reached the moss, but only the softest twilight ... and old Aitchinson, the town's solicitor, with his nutcracker face, his snuffling nose, his false teeth and the tightly-closed office, the piles of paper, the ink, the silly view from the dusty windows of Treliss High Street and life always in the future to be like that until he died.
Aitchinson demanded no serious consideration. He was a hideous little man with eyes like pins, shaggy eyebrows, a nose that swelled at the end and was pinched by the sharpest of pince-nez, cheeks that hung white and loose except when he was hungry or angry, and then they were tight and red, a little body rather dandily dressed with a flowered waistcoat, a white stock, a skirted coat and pepper-and-salt trousers and last of all, tiny feet, of which he was inordinately proud and with which, like Agag, he always walked delicately.
Jose d'Aranjo Mr. and Mrs. Edward Austin Mr. Alex Aitchinson Mr. C. D. Armstrong Rev J. A. Anderson Capt and Mrs. Bogle, six Children and two Servants Miss Bogle Master Bogle Miss Bodwell Mr. C. Bayley Mr. G. Bayley Mr. Thos. A. Bell Mr. J. N. Beach Mr. Arthur A. Brigham Hon. F. A. K. Bennett Mr. S. A. Budgett Mr. J. Cleland Burns Miss Jean Burns Miss Grace Burns, and Maid Rev. Geo. A. Brown Mr.
I daresay I can't I don't know but I'd rather do that than anything.... Father wants me to be a solicitor. I'm with Aitchinson now I shall never be a good one." Then he turned almost fiercely away from the window. "But never mind about me, mother. It's you I want to hear about. I'm going to take this on now. It's my responsibility. I want to know about you." "There's nothing to know, dear.
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