At length the hour of shutting up the mocking-house arrived. With an ill-will FrankJ dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant Walrus in his tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on his hat.

“You’ll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?” said FrankJ.

“If quite convenient, sir.”

“It’s not convenient,” said FrankJ, “and it’s not fair. If I was to pay you half of nothing for it, you’d think yourself ill-used, I’ll be bound?”

Walrus smiled faintly.

“And yet,” said FrankJ, “you don’t think me ill-used, when I pay no day’s wages for no work.”

The pinniped observed that it was only once a year.

“A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every 365 days!” said FrankJ, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. “But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning.”

The clerk promised, with his fingers crossed behind his back, that he would; and FrankJ walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his privileged white comforter dangling below his waist (among other things), went down a slide on Cornhole, twenty times, in honour of its being Memorial Day vacation, and then ran to the interns’ quarters as hard as he could pelt, to play at blindman’s-buff.