"You've stood like that for a quarter of an hour at least.

You'll have Durfy after you if you don't mind." The name startled Reginald into industry, and he set the advertisement up very clearly and carefully, and re-read it once or twice in the type before he could make up his mind to go on to the next.
The thought of it haunted him all day.

Should he tell Horace, or Gedge, or his mother of it?
Should he go and give Durfy notice then and there?
No, he would reply to it before he told any one; and then, if the answer _was_ unsatisfactory--which he could not think possible--then no one would be the wiser or the worse for it.
The day flew on leaden wings.

Gedge put his friend's silence down to anxiety as to the consequences of yesterday's adventure and did and said what he could to express his sympathy.

Mr Durfy alone, sitting at his table, and directing sharp glances every now and then in his direction, could guess the real meaning of his pre-occupation, and chuckled to himself as he saw it.
Reginald spent threepence on his way home that evening--one in procuring a copy of the _Rocket_, and two on a couple of postage-stamps.