Page:Garman and Worse.djvu/289

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Garman and Worse.
287

well as you can; telegraph if you want anything—my keys are in my desk." When he reached the door he turned round and cried, "Yes, I forgot, Svendsen; run over to my mother and tell her—yes, just tell her that it's all 'come right;'" and with that away he ran.

Old Svendsen stood perfectly speechless, staring through the open door, as he rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, which was a habit of his when anything unusually perplexing occurred. Every door was open, a chair upset in the inner office, and Mr. Worse on the road to Paris with a hat and umbrella, Thomas after him in full career with the canvas bag. The cashier was sitting with the coin and notes scattered on the table in front of him, looking as if he had been robbed; and as old Svendsen's eye rested on the ruined letter, he discovered that he had a smudge of ink on one of his fingers. Now, it was thirty years since old Svendsen had had any ink on his fingers. Mr. Worse must have made a splutter with his pen when he snatched it so hurriedly; and as the old bookkeeper's eye wandered from the smudge of ink, to the frightful confusion which reigned in the office, and back again to the smudge, he repeated, slowly and majestically, the magic words which were to awake him from this horrible nightmare: "Tell my mother it has all come right." But matters grew still worse when, a short time afterwards, he presented himself before Mrs. Worse in the back room; for scarcely had he pronounced the fatal words, "It has all come right!" than Mrs. Worse flew at him and kissed him right on his lips.