Unbusinesslike Proceedings in “The Office”—Peekins Grows Desperate and Takes Refuge in the “Three Jolly Tars.”  
Mr Denham stood in front of his office fire with a coat-tail, as usual, under each arm; his feet planted on two little roses that grew on each side of a large bouquet which flourished perennially on his rug, and his eyes fixed on the ceiling. He had just arrived at Redwharf Lane, and looked quite fresh and ruddy from the exercise of walking, for Denham was a great walker, and frequently did the distance between his house and his office on foot.
 
Mr Crumps sat shivering in his own room, looking the reverse of ruddy, for Crumps was old and his blood was thin, and there was no fire in his room. It is but justice to say, however, that this was no fault of Denham’s, for the apartment of his junior partner did not possess a fireplace, and it could not be expected that a fire should be lit, à la Red Indian, on the middle of the floor. At all events Crumps did not expect it. He was not, therefore, liable to disappointment in his expectations. He contented himself, poor old man, with such genial gusts of second-hand warmth as burst in upon him from time to time from Denham’s room when the door was open, or poured in upon him in ameliorating rivulets through the keyhole, like a little gulf-stream, when the door was shut.
 
“The letters, sir,” said Peekins, the meek blue tiger in buttons, entering at that moment and laying a pile of letters on the table.
 
Had Peekins been a little dog without a soul, capable of wagging his tail and fawning, Denham would have patted him, but, being only a boy in blue with a meek spirit, the great man paid no attention to him whatever. He continued to gaze at the ceiling as if he were reading his destiny there. Perhaps he would have looked as blank as the ceiling had he known what that destiny was to be; but he did not know, fortunately (or unfortunately, if the reader chooses), hence he turned with a calm undisturbed countenance to peruse his letters after the boy had retired.
 
We do not say that Denham was a hard man; by no means; he was only peculiar in his views of things in general; that was all!
 
For some time Denham broke seals, read contents, and made jottings, without any expression whatever on his countenance. Presently he took up an ill-folded epistle addressed to “Mister Denham” in a round and rather rugged hand.
 
“Begging,” he muttered with a slight frown.
 
“‘Dear Uncle’ (‘eh!’ he exclaimed,—turned over the leaf in surprise, read the signature, and turned back to the beginning again, with the least possible tinge of surprise still remaining), ‘I’m sorry’ (humph) ‘to have to inform you that the Nancy has become a total wreck,’ (‘indeed!’) ‘on the Goodwin Sands.’ (‘Amazing sands these. What a quantity of wealth they have swallowed up!’) ‘The cargo has been entirely lost,’—(‘ah! it was insured to its full value,’) ‘also two of the hands.’ (‘H’m, their lives wouldn’t be insured. These rough creatures never do insure their lives; wonderfully improvident!’) ‘I am at present disabled, from the effects of a blow on the head received during the storm.’ (Very awkward; particularly so just now.) ‘No doubt Bax will be up immediately to give you particulars.’” (Humph!)
 
“‘The cause of the loss of your schooner was, in my opinion,’ (Mr Denham’s eyebrows here rose in contemptuous surprise), ‘unseaworthiness of vessel and stores.’”
 
Mr Denham made no comment on this part of the epistle. A dark frown settled on his brow as he crumpled the letter in his hand, dropped it on the ground as if it had been a loathsome creature, and set his foot on it.
 
Denham was uncommonly gruff and forbidding all that day. He spoke harshly to old Mr Crumps; found fault with the clerks to such an extent, that they began to regard the office as a species of Pandemonium which ought to have smelt sulphurous instead of musty; and rendered the life of Peekins so insupportable that the poor boy occupied his few moments of leisure in speculating on the average duration of human life and wondering whether it would not be better, on the whole, to make himself an exception to the general rule by leaping off London Bridge at high water—blue-tights, buttons, and all!
 
Things continued in this felicitous condition in the office until five in the afternoon, when there was a change, not so much in the moral as in the physical atmosphere. It came in the form of a thick fog, which rolled down the crooked places of Redwharf Lane, poured through keyholes, curled round the cranes on the warehouses, and the old anchors, cables, and buoys in the lumber-yards; travelled over the mudflats, and crept out upon the muddy river among the colliers, rendering light things indistinct, black things blacker, dark places darker, and affording such an opportunity for unrestrained enjoyment to the rats, that these creatures held an absolute carnival everywhere.
 
About this period of the day Mr Denham rose, put on his hat and greatcoat, and prepared to go. Peekins observed this through a private scratch in the glass door, and signalised the gladsome news in dumb-show to his comrades. Hope at once took the place of despair in the office, for lads and very young men are happily furnished with extremely elastic spirits. The impulse of joy caused by the prospect of Denham’s departure was so strong in the breast of one youth, with red hair, a red nose, red cheeks, large red lips, blue eyes, and red hands (Ruggles by name), that he incontinently seized a sheet of blotting-paper, crumpled it into a ball, and flung it at the head of the youngest clerk, a dark little boy, who sat opposite to him on a tall stool, and who, being a new boy, was copying letters painfully but diligently with a heavy heart.
 
The missile was well aimed. It hit the new boy exactly on the point of the nose, causing him to start and prolong the tail of a y an inch and a quarter beyond its natural limits.
 
This little incident would not have been worth mentioning but for the fact that it was the hinge, so to speak, on which incidents of a more important nature turned. Mr Denham happened to open his door just as the missile was discharged and saw the result, though not the thrower. He had no difficulty, however, in discovering the offender; for each of the other clerks looked at their comrade in virtuous horror, as though to say, “Oh! how could you?—please, sir, it wasn’t me, it was him;” while Ruggles applied himself to his work with an air of abstraction and a face of scarlet that said plainly, “It’s of no use staring in that fashion at me, for I’m as innocent as the unborn babe.”
 
Denham frowned portentously, and that peculiarly dead calm which usually precedes the bursting of a storm prevailed in the office. Before the storm burst, however, the outer door was opened hastily and our friend Bax stood in the room. He was somewhat dishevelled in appearance, as if he had travelled fast. To the clerks in that small office he appeared more fierce and gigantic than usual. Peekins regarded him with undisguised admiration, and wondered in his heart if Jack the Giant-Killer would have dared to encounter such a being, supposing him to have had the chance.
 
“I’m glad I am not too late to find you here, sir,” said Bax, puffing off his hat and bowing slightly to his employer.
 
“Humph!” ejaculated Denham, “step this way.”
 
They entered the inner office, and, the door being shut, Ruggles internally blessed Bax and breathed freely. Under the influence of reaction he even looked defiant.
 
“So you have lost your schooner,” began Denham, sitting down in his chair of state and eyeing the seaman sternly. Bax returned the gaze so much more sternly that Denham felt disconcerted but did not allow his feelings to betray themselves.
 
“The schooner has been lost,” said Bax, “and I am here to report the fact and to present these letters, one from the seamen’s missionary at Ramsgate, the other from your nephew, both of which will show you that no blame attaches to me. I regret the loss, deeply, but it was un—”
 
Bax was going to have said unavoidable, but he felt that the expression would have been incorrect, and stopped.
 
“Finish your remark,” said Denham.
 
“I merely wished to say that it was out of my power to prevent it.”
 
“Oh!” interjected Denham, sarcastically, as he read the letters. “The seamen’s missionary is one of whom I know nothing. His opinion, therefore, carries no weight. As to my nephew, his remarks are simply unworthy of notice. But you say that no blame attaches to you. To whom then does blame attach, if not to the skipper of the vessel? Do you mean to lay it at the door of Providence?”
 
“No, sir, I do not,” replied Bax.
 
“Have you, then, the presumption to insinuate that it lies with me?”
 
Bax was silent.
 
“Am I to expect an answer?” said Denham.
 
“I make no insinuations,” said Bax, after a short pause; “I do but state facts. If the ‘Nancy’ had been fitted with a new tops’l-yard and jib-boom, as I advised last summer, I would have carried her safe into the Downs.”
 
“So,” said Denham, in a tone of increasing sarcasm, “you have the hardihood to insinuate that it was my fault?”
 
Bax reddened with indignation at the tone of insult in which these words were uttered. His bass voice grew deeper and sterner as he said:—
 
“If you insist on plain speaking, sir, you shall have it. I do think the blame of the loss of the ‘Nancy’ lies at your door, and worse than that, the loss of two human lives lies there also. There was not a sound timber or a seaworthy article aboard of the schooner from stem to stern. You know well enough that I have told you this,—in more civil language it may be,—again and again; and I hope that the telling of it now, flatly, will induce you to consider the immense responsibility that lies on your shoulders; for there are other ships belonging to your firm in much the same cond............