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Page 14
Mike picked up the long basket into which he had thrown the letters
after entering the addresses in his ledger, and they moved off down the
aisle. No movement came from Mr Rossiter's lair. Its energetic occupant
was hard at work. They could just see part of his hunched-up back.
'I wish Comrade Downing could see us now,' said Psmith. 'He always set
us down as mere idlers. Triflers. Butterflies. It would be a wholesome
corrective for him to watch us perspiring like this in the cause of
Commerce.'
'You haven't told me yet what on earth you're doing here,' said Mike.
'I thought you were going to the 'Varsity. Why the dickens are you in a
bank? Your pater hasn't lost his money, has he?'
'No. There is still a tolerable supply of doubloons in the old oak
chest. Mine is a painful story.'
'It always is,' said Mike.
'You are very right, Comrade Jackson. I am the victim of Fate. Ah, so
you put the little chaps in there, do you?' he said, as Mike, reaching
the post-office, began to bundle the letters into the box. 'You seem to
have grasped your duties with admirable promptitude. It is the same
with me. I fancy we are both born men of Commerce. In a few years we
shall be pinching Comrade Bickersdyke's job. And talking of Comrade B.
brings me back to my painful story. But I shall never have time to tell
it to you during our walk back. Let us drift aside into this tea-shop.
We can order a buckwheat cake or a butter-nut, or something equally
succulent, and carefully refraining from consuming these dainties, I
will tell you all.'
'Right O!' said Mike.
'When last I saw you,' resumed Psmith, hanging Mike's basket on the
hat-stand and ordering two portions of porridge, 'you may remember that
a serious crisis in my affairs had arrived. My father inflamed with the
idea of Commerce had invited Comrade Bickersdyke--'
'When did you know he was a manager here?' asked Mike.
'At an early date. I have my spies everywhere. However, my pater
invited Comrade Bickersdyke to our house for the weekend. Things turned
out rather unfortunately. Comrade B. resented my purely altruistic
efforts to improve him mentally and morally. Indeed, on one occasion he
went so far as to call me an impudent young cub, and to add that he
wished he had me under him in his bank, where, he asserted, he would
knock some of the nonsense out of me. All very painful. I tell you,
Comrade Jackson, for the moment it reduced my delicately vibrating
ganglions to a mere frazzle. Recovering myself, I made a few blithe
remarks, and we then parted. I cannot say that we parted friends, but
at any rate I bore him no ill-will. I was still determined to make him
a credit to me. My feelings towards him were those of some kindly
father to his prodigal son. But he, if I may say so, was fairly on the
hop. And when my pater, after dinner the same night, played into his
hands by mentioning that he thought I ought to plunge into a career of
commerce, Comrade B. was, I gather, all over him. Offered to make a
vacancy for me in the bank, and to take me on at once. My pater,
feeling that this was the real hustle which he admired so much, had me
in, stated his case, and said, in effect, "How do we go?" I intimated
that Comrade Bickersdyke was my greatest chum on earth. So the thing
was fixed up and here I am. But you are not getting on with your
porridge, Comrade Jackson. Perhaps you don't care for porridge? Would
you like a finnan haddock, instead? Or a piece of shortbread? You have
only to say the word.'
'It seems to me,' said Mike gloomily, 'that we are in for a pretty
rotten time of it in this bally bank. If Bickersdyke's got his knife
into us, he can make it jolly warm for us. He's got his knife into me
all right about that walking-across-the-screen business.'
'True,' said Psmith, 'to a certain extent. It is an undoubted fact that
Comrade Bickersdyke will have a jolly good try at making life a
nuisance to us; but, on the other hand, I propose, so far as in me
lies, to make things moderately unrestful for him, here and there.'
'But you can't,' objected Mike. 'What I mean to say is, it isn't like a
school. If you wanted to score off a master at school, you could always
rag and so on. But here you can't. How can you rag a man who's sitting
all day in a room of his own while you're sweating away at a desk at
the other end of the building?'
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