Smallbone Deceased Read Free

that happy family feeling which Mr. Birley had just commended.
    â€œOh. Lord,” he went on. “There’s Tubby getting up. I do think all this speech making is a mistake.”
    Mr. Tristram Craine rose to reply to the toast of “The Firm.” He was a plump little person, in appearance two-thirds of Charles Cheeryble to one-third of Lord Beaverbrook; in fact, an extremely sharp solicitor.
    What he said is not important, since one after-dinner speech tends to be very like another. However, it afforded an opportunity for Henry Bohun to take a further quick look round the table in an endeavour to identify some of the people with whom he was going to work.
    He himself was the very newest thing in solicitors.
    He had qualified precisely three days previously and joined the firm only that afternoon. His single close acquaintance so far was the flippant Mr. Cove. Birley and Craine he knew, of course. The other reverend parties at the head table were, he suspected, the Ramussens, the Oakshotts, the Bourlasses and the Bridewells of the confederate firms.
    There was a dark-haired youngster, wearing heavy horn-rimmed spectacles and looking a little out of place among the augurs. He suspected that this might be Bob Horniman, the late Abel Horniman’s son. They had been to the same public school, but Bob had been three years his junior and three years is a long time when it marks the gap between fourteen and seventeen.
    Mr. Craine unconsciously resolved this uncertainty for him by saying: “And I feel we should take this opportunity of welcoming our new partner, our founder’s son, who steps forward now to take his father’s place.” (Applause.)
    The dark young man blushed so hotly and took off and wiped his spectacles with such unnecessary gusto that Henry concluded that his guess had been correct. He also reflected that to have a great man for a father was not always an entirely comfortable fate.
    â€œA Richard for an Oliver,” said Mr. Cove, reading his thoughts accurately.
    â€œPardon?” said the young lady on his right.
    â€œGranted as soon as asked,” said Mr. Cove agreeably.
    Then there was that man with the rather sharp face and the unidentifiable, but too obviously old-school tie – he’d seen him somewhere about the office. The girl next to him was a good looker, in a powerful sort of way. She was the possessor of auburn hair and very light blue eyes, elements which may be harmless apart but can be explosive when mixed.
    â€œHe died,” said Mr. Craine – apparently he had reverted to the founder of the firm – “as I am sure he would have wished to die—in harness, it scarcely seems a month ago that I walked into his room and found him at his desk, his pen grasped in his hand—”
    â€œIt really is rather an inspiring thought,” murmured John Cove, “that the last words he ever wrote should have been ‘Unless we hear from you by an early post we shall have no option but to institute proceedings.’ There’s a touch, there, of the old warrior dying with his lance in couch and his face to the foe.”
    After Mr. Craine had sat down the old gentleman with the white beard, who proved indeed to be Mr. Ramussen, awoke and proposed the health of Mr. Oakshott, whereupon Mr. Oakshott retaliated by proposing the health of Mr. Ramussen; whereafter the Bourlasses and the Bridewells and the Burts toasted each other oratorically in a series of ever-decreasing circles. Even the despised Mr. Brown succeeded in putting in a word for Streatham before Mr. Birley, by pushing back his chair and undoing the two bottom buttons of his waistcoat, signified that the ordeal was at an end.
    As people got up from the table and the more informal side of the evening began the junior members of the four firms, who up to now had sat in strictly antisocial groups, began to intermingle a little, a certain nice degree of stratification being