Page:Episodes-before-thirty.djvu/61

Rh approached the swinging doors. While attending strictly to business, never shortening my hours on duty by five minutes, and eagerly helping Kay in our efforts to get in another partner with money, my relief when once outside the actual building was immense. We had engaged a new manager, whose popularity in the town—he was a great cricketer—brought considerable fresh custom, but whose chief value in my eyes lay in the fact that I need not be present quite as much as before. Collins, who weighed twenty stone, was a character. Known for some reason as "the Duke," he had no other title to nobility. He helped trade for a few brief weeks, but also helped himself at the same time, and his exit, not unlike that of Jimmy—who was "fired" for the same reason—was attended by threats of a slander suit, which also, like Jimmy's, was set down in the Greek kalends.

Rh