Even now he could remember the chastened sorrow with which he mounted the high stool of his desire. He had propped open the desk and collected together the belongings of the deceased clerk, and posted them with a little note of sympathy to his widow. Some had seemed too trivial to send, and of these a few still remained, a battered soap-box, a small square of unframed looking-glass, its red back scratched and scored. These, together with the great ebony ruler, had now outlasted his own reign and would pass to the new-comer.
And now the desk was propped open again, and it was his own belongings that he was collecting into a heap. The well-known odour of the wood came to his nostrils and he sighed a little. From shadowy and dusty corners he got together the little trifles that had been part and parcel of his life and arranged them in a neat pile beside him.
"If there's anything I can do for you----" began the junior, brushing his hair in front of a little mirror and settling his purple tie nervously.
"No, Joynings; nothing, I thank you. I'm leaving you old Brown's looking-glass and soap-box--they're fixtures, and go with the position."
The junior tittered a little at this and pulled down the front of his fancy waistcoat, lit a cigarette, and took a pair of roller-skates from the drawer of his desk. He came over and held out his hand.
"Right, then I'll be popping along--good luck, old man, and all that. You'll drop into something soon. If I hear of anything----"
"Oh, I'll be all right," said Edward Povey.
There is always a certain fascination in change and elation in abnormal conditions, even if those conditions constitute a misfortune. Edward Povey was surprised at his inner feelings as he left the portals of Messrs. Kyser, Schultz & Company's offices. In his own mind he knew that he ought to be feeling depressed; but the fact remained that he was feeling nothing of the kind, indeed he felt happier than he had done for the past twenty-two years, except perhaps on that one evening fifteen years ago. Then he had been hurrying out to a small house in a mean street in Barnsbury, to a little woman who was waiting for the news that would enable her to become the wife of the man who brought it. Now he was going to another little house in a mean street, in Clapham this time, to the same woman, but with how different tidings and how differently they would be received. Fifteen years ago the future had looked very bright to the limited vision of Mr. Edward Povey. He had left the office after his marriage with a light step and hurried across the bridge that would lead him to the villa he had taken. As the years passed, the light step had become a sedate walk, and now it was hard to recognize in the little bowed figure that shuffled each evening across London Bridge the Edward Povey of other days.