‘Coffee will be served in a few minutes—Miss Wotherspoon, would you be frightfully kind and do your usual? Thank you so much.’ Miss Wotherspoon’s ‘usual’ was to trudge down to the school kitchen, make the coffee, and carry it up. ‘And meanwhile I’m sure we all thank Mr. Froulish very much for a most stimu­lating evening, and we look forward with great interest to the time when his book will be published.’

‘You look forward a damn long time, then,’ returned Froulish curtly. ‘This is only the first draft. The thing probably won’t be finished for fifteen years. My name isn’t—Trollope.’

He pronounced the last word with so much deliberation, and looked so fixedly at June Veeber, that Charles could have sworn the insult was intentional. His feeling seemed to be shared; startled by a sudden low neighing sound, he looked round. Betty was laughing.

IV

IV

Winter had come, and with it the pace of life had slowed down. Wheeling his cart out every morning, Charles felt solid, respec­table and habit-ridden. Of course, working with Ern had a lot to do with it, for Ern had introduced method and regularity into the business. Everything was organized. Part of the time they worked separately, but for ‘big jobs’—shops, hotels, or tall buildings that required complicated ladder-work—they combined. And at the end of each day, whether they had been together or not, they met for a formal sharing-out of the money they had earned, and a close investigation into whether it was the full amount they had reckoned on when planning the work in advance.

‘Isn’t it rather a fag seeking each other out every evening?’ said Charles once, tentatively, after a two-mile trudge back to Harry’s from an outlying job. But Ern had been firm.

‘Not on yoor life. It’s the first principle of runnin’ a business like this. Quick turn-over, quick share-out. Level it up while there’s nobbat a few bob in it.’

‘But surely we can trust each other?’

‘Why shudd we?’ Ern had returned with something like a sudden vehemence. ‘What do you want to go trustin’ me for? You don’t ’ardly know me from Adam.’

This was unanswerable. Not only did Charles know nothing about his partner, he seemed never to get any closer to him as the months went by. Ern was not taciturn; he talked freely, commenting on all that went on around them, elaborating new ideas for the running of ‘the business’ (for so, under his guid­ance, Charles came to think of it), and, as they sat over their sandwiches and tea in Harry’s, reading out passages from the newspaper with comments.