Suddenly a cheery voice rang out and Peter’s hands shot up above his head.

“Ah, Breen & Co.!  One of those plaguey sevens for a nine.  Here we are!  Oh, Peter Grayson, how often have I told you to be careful!  Ah, what a sorry block of wood you carry on your shoulders.  I won’t be a minute now, Major.”  A gratuitous compliment on the part of my friend, I being a poor devil of a contractor without military aspirations of any kind.  “Well, well, how could I have been so stupid.  Get ready to close up, Patrick.  No, thank you, Patrick, my coat’s inside; I’ll fetch it.”

He was quite another man now, closing the great ledger with a bang; shouldering it as Moses did the Tables of the Law, and carrying it into the big vault behind him—­big enough to back a buggy into had the great door been wider—­shooting the bolts, whirring the combination into so hopeless and confused a state that should even the most daring and expert of burglars have tried his hand or his jimmy on its steel plating he would have given up in despair (that is unless big Patrick fell asleep—­an unheard-of occurrence) and all with such spring and joyousness of movement that had I not seen him like this many times before I would have been deluded into the belief that the real Peter had been locked up in the dismal vault with the musty books and that an entirely different kind of Peter was skipping about outside.

But that was nothing to the air with which he swept his papers into the drawer of his desk, brushed away the crumpled sheets upon which he had figured his balance, and darted to the washstand behind the narrow partition.  Nor could it be compared to the way in which he stripped off his black bombazine office-coat with its baggy pockets—­quite a disreputable-looking coat I must say—­ taking it by the nape of the neck, as if it were some loathsome object to be got rid of, and hanging it upon a hook behind him; nor to the way in which he pulled up his shirt sleeves and plunged his white, long-fingered, delicately modeled hands into the basin, as if cleanliness were a thing to be welcomed as a part of his life.  These carefully dried, each finger by itself—­not forgetting the small seal ring on the little one—­he gave an extra polish to his glistening pate with the towel, patted his fresh, smooth-shaven cheeks with an unrumpled handkerchief which he had taken from his inside pocket, carefully adjusted his white neck-cloth, refastening the diamond pin—­a tiny one but clear as a baby’s tear—­put on his frock-coat with its high collar and flaring tails, took down his silk hat, gave it a flourish with his handkerchief, unhooked his overcoat from a peg behind the door (a gray surtout cut something like the first Napoleon’s) and stepped out to where I sat.