Burton listened to his junior’s attack unresentingly but with increasing bewilderment.  Then he slipped from his seat and walked hurriedly across to the looking-glass, which he took down from its nail.  He gazed at himself long and steadily and from every possible angle.  It is probable that for the first time in his life he saw himself then as he really was.  He was plain, of insignificant appearance, he was ill and tastelessly dressed.  He stood there before the sixpenny-ha’penny mirror and drank the cup of humiliation.

“Calling my tie, indeed!” the office-boy muttered, his smouldering resentment bringing him back to the attack.  “Present from my best girl, that was, and she knows what’s what.  Young lady with a place in a west-end milliner’s shop, too.  If that doesn’t mean good taste, I should like to know what does.  Look at your socks, too, all coming down over the tops of your boots!  Nasty dirty pink and green stripes!  There’s another thing about my collar, too,” he continued, speaking with renewed earnestness as he appreciated his senior’s stupefaction.  “It was clean yesterday, and that’s more than yours was—­or the day before!”

Burton shivered as he finally turned away from that looking-glass.  The expression upon his face was indescribable.

“I am sorry I spoke, Clarkson,” he apologized humbly.  “It certainly seemed to have slipped my memory that I myself—­I can’t think how I managed to make such hideous, unforgivable mistakes.”

“While we are upon the subject,” his subordinate continued, ruthlessly, “why don’t you give your fingernails a scrub sometimes, eh?  You might give your coat a brush, too, now and then, while you are about it.  All covered with scurf and dust about the shoulders!  I’m all for cleanliness, I am.”

Burton made no reply.  He was down and his junior kicked him.

“I’d like to see the color of your shirt if you took those paper cuffs off!” the latter exclaimed.  “Why don’t you chuck that rotten dickey away?  Cave!”

The door leading into the private office was brusquely opened.  Mr. Waddington, the only existing member of the firm, entered—–­a large, untidy-looking man, also dressed in most uncomely fashion, and wearing an ill-brushed silk hat on the back of his head.  He turned at once to his righthand man.

“Well, did you land him?” he demanded, with some eagerness.

Burton shook his head regretfully.

“It was quite impossible to interest him in the house at all, sir,” he declared.  “He seemed inclined to take it at first, but directly he understood the situation he would have nothing more to do with it.”

Mr. Waddington’s face fell.  He was disappointed.  He was also puzzled.

“Understood the situation,” he repeated.  “What the dickens do you mean, Burton?  What situation?”

“I mean about the typhoid, sir, and Lady Idlemay’s refusal to have the drains put in order.”