But there was one thing certain, one point as to which no clerk in the Income-tax Office had a doubt, one fact which had conduced much to the high position which Mr.John Eames now held in the estimation of his brother clerks,--he had given this Mr.
Crosbie such a thrashing that no man had ever received such treatment before and had lived through it.

Wonderful stories were told about that thrashing, so that it was believed, even by the least enthusiastic in such matters, that the poor victim had only dragged on a crippled existence since the encounter.

"For nine weeks he never said a word or eat a mouthful," said one young clerk to a younger clerk who was just entering the office; "and even now he can't speak above a whisper, and has to take all his food in pap." It will be seen, therefore, that Mr.John Eames had about him much of the heroic.
That he was still in love, and in love with the same lady, was known to every one in the office.

When it was declared of him that in the way of amatory expressions he had never in his life opened his mouth to another woman, there were those in the office who knew that this was an exaggeration.

Mr.Cradell, for instance, who in his early years had been very intimate with John Eames, and who still kept up the old friendship,--although, being a domestic man, with a wife and six young children, and living on a small income, he did not go much out among his friends,--could have told a very different story; for Mrs.Cradell herself had, in days before Cradell had made good his claim upon her, been not unadmired by Cradell's fellow-clerk.