One dusty day, when the excessive heat of summer was on the wane, he went
down to Mr. Carr's chambers, and found that gentleman out. Not out for
long, the clerk thought; and sat down and waited. The room he was in
looked out on the cool garden, the quiet river; in the one there was not
a soul except Mr. Broom himself, who had gone in to watch the progress
of his chrysanthemums, and was stooping lovingly over the beds; on the
other a steamer, freighted with a straggling few, was paddling up the
river against the tide, and a barge with its brown sail was coming down
in all its picturesque charm. The contrast between this quiet scene and
the bustling, dusty, jostling world he had come in from, was grateful
even to his disturbed heart; and he felt half inclined to go round to
the garden and fling himself on the lawn as a man might do who was free
from care.
Mr. Carr indulged in the costly luxury of three rooms in the Temple; his
sitting-room, which was his work-room, a bedroom, and a little outer
room, the sanctum of his clerk. Lord Hartledon was in the sitting-room,
but he could hear the clerk moving about in the ante-room, as if he had
no writing on hand that morning. When tired of waiting, he called him in.
"Mr. Taylor, how long do you think he will be? I've been dozing, I
think."
"Well, I thought he'd have been here before now, my lord. He generally
tells me if he is going out for any length of time; but he said nothing
to-day.
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