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William here caught sight of a stray cat at the other end of the garden. He bound up his scratches mechanically with an ink-stained handkerchief. Then he went indoors. Robert was conversing with his friend in the library. "Well," said the friend, "it's nearly next month. Has she landed him yet?" "By Jove!" said Robert. "First of April to-morrow!" He looked at William suspiciously.
Dudley, he only smiles and shakes his head. Then off he toddles, wearin' his old ink-stained office coat and even keepin' on the green eye-shade. Well, I don't know how long they had him on the grill; but it couldn't have been more'n half an hour, for along about three o'clock I strolls into the audit department, and there's old Dudley back on his perch writin' away again.
But Esther still clung to the hope that she could do something to rescue him. One night, when the others had gone to bed, she crept down to the sombre study. Her father did not turn his head as she entered. She crossed the room and knelt down by the ink-stained table, laying her hands on his knee. He put them gently away and motioned her to rise. "Do not do that," he said in a dull voice.
But, after all, there was no time to be bored that winter. The grim struggle to hang on demanded all our energy. When I had first visited the McClure Press, I had looked distastefully at Myrtle's ink-stained hands and face, and at the black apron stiff with ink which she wore at her work.
For a whole month nothing was heard of Ivan Ivanovitch. He shut himself up at home. His ancestral chest was opened, and from it were taken silver rubles, his grandfather's old silver rubles! And these rubles passed into the ink-stained hands of legal advisers.
"Yeh," mumbled the lad, astonished at finding himself addressed, not as an ink-stained husk of humanity, but as an understanding soul. "I haven't," said Fran softly, talking to him as if unconscious of the presence of two listening men, "but I had one, a few years ago and, oh, it seems so long since she died, Jakey three years is a pretty long time to be without a mother.
He had been spending the whole afternoon in perusing the long list of "wanteds" in the Daily Telegraph, and his ink-stained forefinger showed the perseverance with which he had been answering every advertisement that could possibly apply to him.
He sank to his knees beside the ink-stained wooden table on the threadbare carpet and buried his face in his arms. All of his soul was compressed into a single agony of prayer. He prayed that this bitter trial might not come upon him, that this great peril might not approach his children. He prayed that the visitation which he dreaded might be averted by almighty power.
Clara arrived on the scene just when the confusion was at its height; the room was littered with scraps of paper and inky cloths; the famous printer's towel was lying on the desk; the stove, with its hearth piled full of ashes, emitted smoke and coal gas freely; and the printer was emptying the vials of his wrath upon the public in general, because all wanted their printing done at the same instant; while the boy, with a comical look of fear upon his ink-stained face, was dodging here and there, striving as best he could to avoid the threatening disaster.
They were shown into a room where a tired-looking man bent over a large, ink-stained table littered over with papers. "Monsieur? Madame?" he glanced up inquiringly, and gave them a searching look. But he did not rise from the table, as Sylvia expected him to do. "What can I do for you?" he said.
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