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Updated: June 23, 2025
And then Mr Butterwell was nervous, and if the thing was managed well, he might be cheated out of an assent, before time had been given him in which to pluck up courage for refusing. But Crosbie doubted his own courage also, fearing that if he gave himself time for hesitation he would hesitate, and that, hesitating, he would feel the terrible disgrace of the thing and not do it.
I promised Optimist I would read them before three, and it's past two now." So saying he sat himself down at his table, and Crosbie felt that he was bound to leave the room. Mr Butterwell, when he was left alone, did not read the papers which Thompson brought him; but sat, instead, thinking of his five hundred pounds. "Just put them down," he said to Thompson.
Butterwell was a good-natured, easy man, anxious to stand well with all about him, never pretending to any very high tone of feeling or of morals; and yet Butterwell would say no word of comfort to him.
The man to whom he was now thinking of applying as his friend was a certain Mr Butterwell, who had been his predecessor in the secretary's chair, and who now filled the less onerous but more dignified position of a Commissioner. Mr Crosbie had somewhat despised Mr Butterwell, and had of late years not been averse to showing that he did so.
In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he let Mr Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town. "And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at present." "By-the-by, of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on that head. So you're going to be married?
"Do you know " said Butterwell, beginning. "Sit down, won't you?" said Crosbie, seating himself as he spoke. If there was to be a contest, he would make the best fight he could. He would show a better spirit here than he had done on the railway platform. Butterwell did sit down, and felt as he did so, that the very motion of sitting took away some of his power.
"Mr Crosbie is here to-day," said Mr Butterwell to Mr Optimist. "Oh, indeed," said Mr Optimist, very gravely; for he had heard all about the row at the railway station. "They've made a monstrous show of him." "I am very sorry to hear it. It's so so so If it were one of the younger clerks, you know, we should tell him that it was discreditable to the department."
When Mr Butterwell heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had begrudged it to him.
So the papers were put down, and there they lay all that day and all the next. Then Thompson took them away again, and it is to be hoped that somebody read them. Five hundred pounds! It was a large sum of money, and Crosbie was a man for whom Mr Butterwell in truth felt no very strong affection. "Of course he must have it now," he said to himself.
"As to the duties of your new office" and Mr Optimist continued his speech, taking no other notice of the departure of his enemy than what was indicated by an increased brightness of his eye and a more satisfactory tone of voice "you will find yourself quite familiar with them." "Indeed he will," said Butterwell.
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