“I say, Jenkins, how you cough!”

“Yes, sir, I do. It’s a sign that autumn’s coming on. I have been pretty free from it all the summer. I think the few days I lay in bed through that fall, must have done good to my chest; for, since then, I have hardly coughed at all. This last day or two it has been bad again.”

“What cough do you call it?” went on Roland Yorke—you may have guessed he was the speaker. “A churchyard cough?”

“Well, I don’t know, sir,” said Jenkins. “It has been called that, before now. I dare say it will be the end of me at last.”

“Cool!” remarked Roland. “Cooler than I should be, if I had a cough, or any plague of the sort, that was likely to be my end. Does it trouble your mind, Jenkins?”

“No, sir, not exactly. It gives me rather down-hearted thoughts now and then, till I remember that everything is sure to be ordered for the best.”

“The best! Should you call it for ‘the best’ if you were to go off?” demanded Roland, drawing pen-and-ink chimneys upon his blotting-paper, with clouds of smoke coming out, as he sat lazily at his desk.

“I dare say, sir, if that were to happen, I should be enabled to see that it was for the best. There’s no doubt of it.”

“According to that theory, everything that happens must be for the best. You may as well say that pitching on to your head and half killing yourself, was for the best. Moonshine, Jenkins!”

“I think even that accident was sent for some wise purpose, sir. I know, in some respects, it was very palpably for the best. It afforded me some days of quiet, serious reflection, and it served to show how considerate everybody was for me.”

“And the pain?”

“That was soon over, sir. It made me think of that better place where there will be no pain. If I am to be called there early, Mr. Roland, it is well that my thoughts should be led to it.”

Roland stared with all his eyes. “I say, Jenkins, what do you mean? You have nothing serious the matter with you?”

“No, sir; nothing but the cough, and a weakness that I feel. My mother and brother both died of the same thing, sir.”

“Oh, nonsense!” returned Roland. “Because one’s mother dies, is that any reason why we should fall into low spirits and take up the notion that we are going to die, and look out for it? I am surprised at you, Jenkins.”

“I am not in low spirits, sir; and I am sure I do not look out for it. I might have looked out for it any autumn or any spring of late, had I been that way inclined, for I have had the cough at those periods, as you know, sir. There’s a difference, Mr. Roland, between looking out for a thing, and not shutting one’s eyes to what may come.”

“I say, old fellow, you just put all such notions away from you”—and Roland really meant to speak in a kindly, cheering spirit. “My father died of dropsy; and I may just as well set on, and poke and pat at myself every other morning, to see if it’s not attacking me. Only think what would become of this office without you! Galloway would fret and fume himself into his tomb at having nobody but me in it.”

A smile crossed Jenkins’s face at the idea of the office, confided to the management of Roland Yorke. Poor Jenkins was one of the doubtful ones, from a sanitary point of view. Always shadowy, as if a wind would blow him away, and, for some years, suffering much from a cough, which only disappeared in summer, he could not, and did not, count upon a long life. He had quite recovered from his accident, but the cough had now come on with much force, and he was feeling unusually weak.

“You don’t look ill, Jenkins.”

“Don’t I, sir? The Reverend Mr. Yorke met me, to-day—”

“Don’t bring up his name before me!” interrupted Roland, raising his voice to anger. “I may begin to swear, perhaps, if you do.”

“Why, what has he done?” wondered Jenkins.

“Never mind what he has done,” nodded Roland. “He is a disgrace to the name of Yorke. I enjoyed the pleasure of telling him so, the other night, more than I have enjoyed anything a long while. He was so mad! If he had not been a parson, I shouldn’t wonder but he’d have pitched into me.”

“Mr. Roland, sir, you know the parties are waiting for that lease,” Jenkins ventured to remind him.

“Let the parties wait,” rejoined Roland. “Do they think this office is going to be hurried as if it were a common lawyer’s? I say, Jenkins, where has old Galloway taken flight to, this afternoon?”

“He has an appointment with the surrogate,” answered Jenkins. “Oh!—I quite forgot to mention something to you, Mr. Roland.”

“Mention it now,” said Roland.

“A person came this morning, sir, and was rather loud,” said Jenkins, in a tone of deprecation, as if he would apologize for having to repeat the news. “He thought you were in, Mr. Roland, and that I was only denying you, and he grew insolent. Mr. Galloway happened to be in his room, unfortunately, and heard it, and he came out himself, and sent the person away. Mr. Galloway was very angry, and he desired me to tell you, sir, that he would not have that sort of people coming here.”

Roland took up the ruler, and essayed to balance it on the edge of his nose. “Who was it?” asked he.

“I am not sure who it was, though I know I have seen the man, somewhere. I think he wanted payment of a bill, sir.”

“Nothing more likely,” rejoined Roland, with characteristic indifference. “I hope his head won’t ache till he gets it! I am cleared out for some time to come. I’d like to know who the fellow was, though, Jenkins, that I might punish him for his impudence. How dared he come here?”

“I asked him to leave his name, sir, and he said Mr. Roland Yorke knew his name quite well enough, without having it left for him.”

“As brassy as that, was he! I wish to goodness it was the fashion to have a cistern in your house-roofs!” emphatically added Roland.

“A what, sir?” cried Jenkins, lifting his eyes from his writing.

“A water-cistern, with a tap, worked by a string, at pleasure. You could give it a pull, you know, when such customers as those came, and they’d find themselves deluged. That would cool their insolence, if anything............