Hawk Street had long since ceased to be exciting.

The fellows I liked--and they were very few--did not obtrude their affections on me during business hours, and the fellows I disliked had given up the pastime of baiting me as a bad job.
I had my own department of work to attend to, and very little communication with any one else in the doing of it, except with Doubleday, who, as the reader knows, usually favoured me when anything specially uninviting wanted doing.
Of Hawkesbury I now saw and heard less than any one.

He had been promoted to a little glazed-in box of his own, where in stately solitude he managed the petty-cash, kept the correspondence, and generally worked as hard as one who is a cut above a clerk and a cut below a partner is expected to do.
On the day in question I was strongly tempted to break in upon his solitude and demand an explanation of his conduct to Billy on the preceding evening.

But a moment's reflection convinced me of the folly of such a course.

It was not likely, if I got any answer at all, I should get a satisfactory one, while to reopen communications at all after what had occurred might be unwise and mischievous.