At first Japp praised my energy, for it left him plenty of leisure to sit indoors and drink.

But soon he grew suspicious, for he must have seen that I was in a fair way to oust him altogether.

He was very anxious to know if I had seen Colles in Durban, and what the manager had said.

'I have letters,' he told me a hundred times, 'from Mr Mackenzie himself praising me up to the skies.
The firm couldn't get along without old Peter Japp, I can tell you.' I had no wish to quarrel with the old man, so I listened politely to all he said.

But this did not propitiate him, and I soon found him so jealous as to be a nuisance.