Robert Ashford was between eighteen and
nineteen. He was no taller than Cyril, but it would have been
difficult to judge his age by his face, which had a wizened look;
and, as Nellie said one day, in his absence, he might pass very well
for sixty.
It was easy enough for Cyril to see that Robert Ashford heartily
disliked him; the covert scowls that he threw across the table at
meal-time, and the way in which he turned his head and feigned to be
too busy to notice him as he passed through the shop, were sufficient
indications of ill-will. The younger apprentice, Tom Frost, was but a
boy of fifteen; he gave Cyril the idea of being a timid lad. He did
not appear to share his comrade's hostility to him, but once or
twice, when Cyril came out from the office after making up the
accounts of the day, he fancied that the boy glanced at him with an
expression of anxiety, if not of terror.
"If it were not," Cyril said to himself, "that Tom is clearly too
nervous and timid to venture upon an act of dishonesty, I should say
that he had been pilfering something; but I feel sure that he would
not attempt such a thing as that, though I am by no means certain
that Robert Ashford, with his foxy face and cross eyes, would not
steal his master's goods or any one else's did he get the chance.
Unless he were caught in the act, he could do it with impunity, for
everything here is carried on in such a free-and-easy fashion that
any amount of goods might be carried off without their being missed.
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