"
CHAPTER X. HIS EXCELLENCY ORMUZ KHAN
The city clocks were chiming the hour of ten on the following
morning when a page from the Savoy approached the shop of Mr.
Jarvis, bootmaker, which is situated at no great distance from
the hotel. The impudent face of the small boy wore an expression
of serio-comic fright as he pushed open the door and entered the
shop.
Jarvis, the bootmaker, belonged to a rapidly disappearing class
of British tradesmen. He buckled to no one, but took an artistic
pride in his own handiwork, criticism from a layman merely
provoking a scornful anger which had lost Jarvis many good
customers.
He was engaged, at the moment of the page's entrance, in a little
fitting room at the back of his cramped premises, but through the
doorway the boy could see the red, bespectacled face with its
fringe of bristling white beard, in which he detected all the
tokens of brewing storm. He whistled softly in self-sympathy.
"Yes, sir," Jarvis was saying to an invisible patron, "it's a
welcome sight to see a real Englishman walk into my shop
nowadays. London isn't London, sir, since the war, and the Strand
will never be the Strand again." He turned to his assistant, who
stood beside him, bootjack in hand. "If he sends them back
again," he directed, "tell him to go to one of the French firms
in Regent Street who cater to dainty ladies." He positively
snorted with indignation, while the page, listening, whistled
again and looked down at the parcel which he carried.
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