iable interference.

Mr. Crocker represents to me that he is to be dismissed
because of some act of which you as his superior officer
highly disapprove. He asks me to appeal to you on his
behalf because we have been acquainted with each other.
His father is agent to my uncle Lord Persiflage, and
we have met at my uncle's house. I do not dare to put
this forward as a plea for mercy. But I understand that
Mr. Crocker is about to be married almost immediately,
and, perhaps, you will feel with me that a period in
a man's life which should beyond all others be one of
satisfaction, of joy, and of perfect contentment, may
be regarded with a feeling of mercy which would be
prejudicial if used more generally.

Your faithful servant,

HAMPSTEAD.

When he wrote those words as to the period of joy and satisfaction
his own heart was sore, sore, sore almost to breaking. There could
never be such joy, never be such satisfaction for him.

CHAPTER XV.

"DISMISSAL. B. B."

By return of post Lord Hampstead received the following answer to his
letter;--

MY DEAR LORD HAMPSTEAD,--

Mr. Crocker's case is _a very bad one_; but the Postmaster
General shall see your appeal, and his lordship will,
I am sure, sympathize with your humanity--as do I also.
I cannot take upon myself to say what his lordship will
think it right to do, and it will be better, therefore,
that you should abstain for the present from communicating
with Mr. Crocker.

I am,
Your lordship's very faithful servant,

BOREAS BODKIN.

Any excuse was sufficient to our Aeolus to save him from the horror
of dismissing a man. He knew well that Crocker, as a public servant,
was not worth his salt. Sir Boreas was blessed,--or cursed,--with
a conscience, but the stings of his conscience, though they were
painful, did not hurt him so much as those of his feelings. He had
owned to himself on this occasion that Crocker must go. Crocker was
in every way distasteful to him. He was not only untrustworthy and
incapable, but audacious also, and occasionally impudent. He was a
clerk of whom he had repeatedly said that it would be much better to
pay him his salary and let him have perpetual leave of absence, than
keep him even if there were no salary to be paid. Now there had come
a case on which it was agreed by all the office that the man must go.
Destroy a bundle of official papers!