Craven, or anybody. So, as I have
said, three months passed. We had got well into the dog-days by that
time; there was very little to do in the office. Mr. Craven had left for
his annual holiday, which he always took in the company of his wife and
daughters--a correct, but possibly a depressing, way of spending a
vacation which must have been intended to furnish some social variety in
a man's life; and we were all very idle, and all very much inclined to
grumble at the heat, and length, and general slowness of the days, when
one morning, as I was going out in order to send a parcel off to Mrs.
Craven, who should I meet coming panting up the stairs but Miss Blake!
"Is that you, Patterson?" she gasped. I assured her it was I in the
flesh, and intimated my astonishment at seeing her in hers.
"Why, I thought you were in France, Miss Blake," I suggested.
"That's where I have just come from," she said. "Is Mr. Craven in?" I
told her he was out of town.
"Ay--that's where everybody can be but me," she remarked, plaintively.
"They can go out and stay out, while I am at the beck and call of all
the scum of the earth. Well, well, I suppose there will be quiet for me
sometime, if only in my coffin."
As I failed to see that any consolatory answer was possible, I made no
reply.
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