"Stay where you are. I can find my way out of the place."
She departed, slamming the door after her. Mr. Waddington came and sat
down by his former clerk's side.
"Tell me, Burton," he asked kindly, "how did you come to do this thing?"
"It was the professor and the girl," he murmured. "They made it seem so
reasonable."
"It is always the girl," Mr. Waddington reflected. "The girl with the
blue eyes, I suppose, whom you told me about? The girl of the garden?"
Burton nodded.
"Her father is a scientific man," he explained. "He wants money badly
to go on with some excavations in Assyria. Between them all, I
consented. Waddington," he went on, looking up, "I was beginning to get
terrified. I had only two beans left. I have parted with them. They
could have lasted me only a few months. I thought if I had to go back,
I would go back free from any anxieties of work in an office. Wealth
must help one somehow. If I can travel, surround myself with books,
live in the country, I can't ever be so bad, I can't fall back where I
was before. What do you think, Mr. Waddington? You must have this on
your mind sometimes. You yourself have only six or seven months left."
Mr. Waddington sighed.
"Do you think that it isn't a nightmare for me, too?" he said gently.
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