“It’s very much what I understand by it, too.  But have I ever got hold of anything of yours?”

“Yes, confound you!  You’ve taken my job—­the job I’ve waited for ever since 1885.”

“Did waiting for it make it yours?  If so, you would have come by it more easily than I did.  I worked for it.”

“Worked for it?  Haven’t I worked for it, too?  Haven’t I been in this office for going on seventeen years?  Haven’t I done what they’ve paid me for—?”

“I dare say.  But I’ve done twice what they’ve paid me for.  That’s the secret of my pull, and I don’t mind giving it away.  You mayn’t like it—­some fellows don’t; but you’ll admit it it’s a pull you could have had, as well as I. Look here, Green,” he continued, in the same quiet tone, “I’m sorry for you.  If I were in your place, I dare say I should feel as you do.  But if I were in your place, I’ll be hanged if I shouldn’t make myself fit to get out of it.  You’re not fit—­and that’s the only reason why you aren’t going as resident manager to Rosario.  You’re labelled with the year ‘1885,’ as if you were a bottle of champagne—­and you’ve forgotten that champagne is a wine that gets out of date.  You’re a good chap—­quite as good as your position—­but you’re not better than your position—­and when you are you won’t be left in it any longer.”

In speaking in this way the man who had been Norrie Ford was consciously doing violence to himself.  His natural tendency was to be on friendly terms with those around him, and he had no prompting stronger than the liking to be liked.  In normal conditions he was always glad to do a kindness; and when he hurt any one’s feelings he hurt his own still more.  Even now, though he felt justified in giving little Green to understand his intoleration of impertinence, he was obliged to fortify himself by appealing to his creed that he owed no consideration to any one.  Little Green was protected by a whole world organized in his defence; Norrie Ford had been ruined by that world, while Herbert Strange had been born outside it.  With a temperament like that of a quiet mastiff, he was forced to turn himself into something like a wolf.

In spite of the fact that little Green’s account of the brief meeting on the stairs presented it in the light of the castigation he had administered to “that confounded upstart from nobody knows where,” Strange noticed that it made the clerks in the office, most of whom had been his superiors as Green had been, less inclined to bark at his heels.  He got respect from them, even if he could not win popularity—­and from popularity, in any case, he had been shut out from the first.  No man can be popular who works harder than anybody else, shuns companionship, and takes his rare amusements alone.  He had been obliged to do all three, knowing in advance that it would create for him a reputation of an “ugly brute” in quarters whence he would have been glad to get good-will.