'
Elfride looked silently and hopelessly out of the window with
large heavy eyes and wet cheeks.
'I call it great temerity--and long to call it audacity--in
Hewby,' resumed her father. 'I never heard such a thing--giving
such a hobbledehoy native of this place such an introduction to me
as he did. Naturally you were deceived as well as I was. I don't
blame you at all, so far.' He went and searched for Mr. Hewby's
original letter. 'Here's what he said to me: "Dear Sir,--
Agreeably to your request of the 18th instant, I have arranged to
survey and make drawings," et cetera. "My assistant, Mr. Stephen
Smith"--assistant, you see he called him, and naturally I
understood him to mean a sort of partner. Why didn't he say
"clerk"?'
'They never call them clerks in that profession, because they do
not write. Stephen--Mr. Smith--told me so. So that Mr. Hewby
simply used the accepted word.'
'Let me speak, please, Elfride! "My assistant, Mr. Stephen Smith,
will leave London by the early train to-morrow morning...MANY
THANKS FOR YOUR PROPOSAL TO ACCOMMODATE HIM...YOU MAY PUT EVERY
CONFIDENCE IN HIM, and may rely upon his discernment in the matter
of church architecture." Well, I repeat that Hewby ought to be
ashamed of himself for making so much of a poor lad of that sort.'
'Professional men in London,' Elfride argued, 'don't know anything
about their clerks' fathers and mothers. They have assistants who
come to their offices and shops for years, and hardly even know
where they live.
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