"Oh, Charles! Charles! be punctually home by six!" exclaimed they, as he embraced them both at parting, and added, bursting afresh into tears, "do consider the agony--the dreadful suspense we shall be in all day!"
"I will return by six, to a minute! Don't fear for _me_!" he replied with a smile--which, however, instantly disappeared, as soon as he had quitted their presence.
Old Mr. Quirk was the next morning, about ten o'clock, over head and ears in business of all kinds--and sadly missed the clear-headed and energetic Gammon; so, fearing that that gentleman's indisposition must still continue, inasmuch as there were no symptoms of his coming to the office as usual, he took off his spectacles, locked his room door, in order to prevent any one by any possibility looking on any of the numerous letters and papers lying on his table; and set off to make a call upon Mr. Gammon--whose countenance, flushed and harassed, strongly corroborated his representations concerning the state of his health. Still, he said, he could attend to any business which Mr. Quirk was prepared then to mention; whereupon Mr. Quirk took from his pocket a piece of paper, drew on his glasses, and put questions to him from a number of memoranda which he had made for the purpose. Gammon's answers were brief, pointed, and explicit, on all matters mentioned, as might have been expected from one of his great ability and energy--but his muddle-headed companion could not carry away a single clear idea of what had been so clearly told him; and without avowing the fact, of which he felt, however, a painful consciousness, simply determined to do nothing that he could possibly avoid doing, till Mr. Gammon should have made his reappearance at the office, and reduced the little chaos there into something like form and order.
Before he quitted Mr. Gammon, that gentleman quietly and easily led the conversation towards the subject of the various outstanding debts due to the firm.
"Ah, drat it!" quoth the old gentleman, briskly--"the heaviest, you know, is--eh?--I suppose, however," he added apprehensively, and scratching his head, "I mustn't name _that_--I mean that fellow Aubrey's account--without our coming to words."