About the middle of July the Bonifaces went down to Devonshire for their usual summer holiday, and Frithiof found that, as Roy had predicted, Mr. Horner made himself most disagreeable, and never lost a chance of interfering. It must be owned that there are few things so trying as fussiness, particularly in a man, of whom such weakness seems unworthy. And Mr. Horner was the most fussy mortal on earth. It seemed as if he called forth all that was bad in Frithiof, and Frithiof also called out everything that was bad in him. The breach between the two was made much wider by a most trivial incident. A miserable-looking dog unluckily made its way into the shop one morning and disturbed Mr. Horner in his sanctum.
“What is the meaning of this?” he exclaimed, bearing down upon Frithiof. “Can you not keep stray curs off the premises? Just now too, with hydrophobia raging!” And he drove and kicked the dog to the door.
Now there is one thing which no Norseman can tolerate for a moment, and that is any sort of cruelty to animals. Frithiof, in his fury, did not measure his words, or speak as the employed to the employer, and from that time Mr. Horner’s hatred of him increased tenfold. To add to all this wretchedness an almost tropical heat set in, London was like a huge, overheated oven; every day Frithiof found the routine of business less bearable, every day he was less able to fight against his love for Blanche, and he rapidly sunk into the state which hard-headed people flatter themselves is a mere foolish fancy—that most real and trying form of illness which goes by the name of depression. Again and again he wrestled with the temptation that had assailed him long ago in Hyde Park, and each sight of James Horner, each incivility from those he had to serve, made the struggle harder.
He was sitting at his desk one morning adding up a column which had been twice interrupted, and which had three times come to a different result, when once again the swing-door was pushed open, and a shadow falling across his account-book warned him that the customer had come to the song-counter. Annoyed and impatient, he put down his pen and went forward, forcing up the sort of cold politeness which he assumed now, and which differed strangely from the bright, genial courtesy, that had once been part of his nature.