"We will see, mother," he said. She who knew him well perceived that
it would be vain to talk to him further.

"Oh, yes," he said, "I will go out to Hendon, perhaps on Sunday. That
Mr. Vivian is a pleasant fellow, and as Hampstead does not wish to
quarrel with me I certainly will not quarrel with him."

Roden was generally popular at his office, and had contrived to make
his occupation there pleasant to himself and interesting; but he had
his little troubles, as will happen to most men in all walks of life.
His came to him chiefly from the ill-manners of a fellow-clerk who
sat in the same room with him, and at the same desk. There were five
who occupied the apartment, an elderly gentleman and four youngsters.
The elderly gentleman was a quiet, civil, dull old man, who never
made himself disagreeable, and was content to put up with the
frivolities of youth, if they did not become too uproarious or
antagonistic to discipline. When they did, he had but one word of
rebuke. "Mr. Crocker, I will not have it." Beyond that he had never
been known to go in the way either of reporting the misconduct of
his subordinates to other superior powers, or in quarrelling with
the young men himself. Even with Mr. Crocker, who no doubt was
troublesome, he contrived to maintain terms of outward friendship.
His name was Jerningham, and next to Mr. Jerningham in age came Mr.
Crocker, by whose ill-timed witticisms our George Roden was not
unfrequently made to suffer. This had sometimes gone so far that
Roden had contemplated the necessity of desiring Mr. Crocker to
assume that a bond of enmity had been established between them;--or
in other words, that they were not "to speak" except on official
subjects. But there had been an air of importance about such a
proceeding of which Crocker hardly seemed to be worthy; and Roden
had abstained, putting off the evil hour from day to day, but still
conscious that he must do something to stop vulgarities which were
distasteful to him.

The two other young men, Mr. Bobbin and Mr. Geraghty, who sat at a
table by themselves and were the two junior clerks in that branch of
the office, were pleasant and good-humoured enough. They were both
young, and as yet not very useful to the Queen. They were apt to come
late to their office, and impatient to leave it when the hour of four
drew nigh. There would sometimes come a storm through the Department,
moved by an unseen but powerful and unsatisfied Aeolus, in w