Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/182

 bility. He knows that it is your race as well as his. I have watched him for two years. That gravity—of his—even when he smiles."

Sorrell's face had had one of its luminous moments.

"What do you think yourself, Porteous? Frankly?"

Mr. Porteous had rubbed his bald head.

"One doesn't like to talk about certainties. He may be up against one or two smug little prodigies who will fizzle out when they are ten years older,—just when he is beginning. But I look on it as a five to one chance."

A fanatical look had come into Sorrell's eyes.

"Scholarship or no scholarship—he shall get there. I can manage it."

So, Christopher returned to his lawn-mower, and Sorrell lit a pipe and sat down again at his desk. He had come to love his desk, its orderliness, its solidity, its neat files and ledgers and docketed bills. It was a rock upon which he was building a new reputation.

"I wonder if you would take over the accounts, Stephen?"

Roland had made that suggestion more than a year ago, and Sorrell had not hesitated to seize this new opportunity. During the last few months he had become more and more responsible for the interior economy of the hotel; he had taken over the catering; he checked and paid the bills. He was becoming a master of detail. He had begun to know when electric light was being wasted, or the consumption of coal suggested extravagance. He had the market prices of food-stuffs at his fingers' ends, and none of the Winstonbury tradesmen dared to play tricks with him. He was too wide awake and too thorough.

He loved detail. His fingers, long and straight and sensitive, the ungual phalanges bent slightly back, were the fingers of a man with a passion for exactness. His ledgers and note-books were as neat as his finger nails. While Christopher went to and fro across the grass, Sorrell smoked his pipe and examined a sheaf of bills, turning them over with a deft and deliberate first finger.

He made frequent notes.

"Tea. Up four pounds in the week.

"Laundry. Charged for fifty-three more towels.

"Seven table-napkins missing.