 CHAPTER X It was at Maidment and Hearst's engineers that Johnny's father had met his death, and it was to Maidment and Hearst that Nan had resolved to take the boy and beg an apprenticeship for him. True, the firm had at the time done more than might have been expected of it, for the accident had been largely a matter of heedlessness on the victim's part, and the victim was no old hand, but had taken his job only a few months before. It had seen that nothing was lacking for the widow's immediate needs, nor for a decent funeral, and it had offered to find places in an orphanage for the children, but Nan may could not bring herself to part with them. Bessie indeed was barely out of the hospital at the time, and then the lonely old butterfly hunter had cut matters short by carrying them off all three, so that now, if Johnny were to learn a trade, Maidment and Hearst was his best chance, for it was just possible that the firm would take him apprentice without premium, when it was reminded of his father. In this thing Nan may wasted no time. The house once cleaned within, and something done towards stocking the shop, Johnny was made ready in the best of his clothes for inspection. It was a muddy morning, and Mrs. May had fears for the polish on Johnny's boots. Gladly would she have carried him across the mirey streets as she had done in the London of years ago, though she knew better than to hint at such an outrage on his dignity. So they walked wearily, dodging puddles with mutual warnings, and fleeing the splashes of passing vans. Truly London was changed, even more in Nan may's eyes than in Johnny's. The people seemed greyer, more anxious, worse fed, than when she lived among them before, a young wife in a smiling world, with the best part of 38 shillings to spend every week. The shops were worse stocked, and many that she remembered well were shut. True, some flourished signs of prosperity, but to her it seemed prosperity of a different and a paltry assort, vulgar and trumpery. Once out of the harbour lane district, the little houses lacked the snug, geranium-decked, wire-blinded, rep-curtained comfort of aspects she remembered so well. The air that suggested a red fire within, a shining copper kettle, a high fander, and muffins on a trivet. Things were cheap and cold and grubby. Above all, the silent shipyards oppressed her fancies. Truly this looked an ill place for new trade. In her hunt for the vacant shop she had encountered no old friends, and now, though she walked through familiar streets, she had little but fancied recognition now and again of some face at a shop door. Presently they turned a corner and came upon a joyful crowd of boys. They ran, they yelled, they flung, and in their midst cursed and floundered a rusty rag of a woman, drunk and infuriate, harried, battered and bedeviled. Her clothes were of decent black, but dusty and neglected, and one side of her skirt dripped with fresh mud. Her hair was draggled about her shoulders, and her bonnet hung in it, a bunch of mangled crepe, while she staggered hither and thither, making futile swipes at the nimble rascals about her. She struck out feebly with a little parcel of bacon-rashes rolled in a paper, and already a rasha had escaped to be flung at her head and flung again by the hand that could first snatch it from the gutter. Yeah, old mother-born drunk! shouted the young savages, and two swooped again with the stretch-skipping rope that had already tripped their victim twice. But she clasped the post with both arms, and cursed at large, horse and impotent. Nanmay started and stood, and then hurried on, for she had recognized the face at last, grime and bloated though it had grown. Lord, she said, it's Emma Pacey. To think, to think of it! Indeed, the shock was great, and the change amazing. It was a change that would have baffled recognition by an eye that had less closely noted the Emma Pacey of seventeen years ago. But Emma Pacey was a smart girl then, though fast and forward, Nanmay had always said, and had caused some little disturbance in a course of true love which led, nevertheless, to Nan's wedding after all. In such circumstances, a woman views her rival's face as she views her clothes, with a searching eye and remembers well. And to come to that, used Nanmay, perplexed at a shade of emotion that seemed ill-turned to the occasion, wherein the simple soul saw nothing of womanish triumph. But the changes seemed not all for the worse. There were busy factories, and some that had been small were now large. Coffee stalls, too, were set up in two or three places, where no such accommodation was in the old time. Always a sign of increasing trade. But on the whole, the walk did nothing to raise Nan's spirits. Johnny saw little. The excursion was to decide whether he should learn to make steam engines or not. Though what manner of adventure he was to encounter, he figured but vaguely. He was to come into presence of some gentleman, presumably, gentleman who would settle his whole destiny offhand, on a cursory examination of his appearance and manner. He must be alert to show his best behaviour, though what things the gentleman might do or say, in what unforeseen problems of conduct might present themselves, were past guessing. Though he guessed and guessed oblivious of present circumstance. Only once before had he felt quite that quality of trepidation, and that was three years back when he trudged along the road to Woodford to get a tooth drawn. But he came off very well, though the preliminaries were solemn, rather more potentous, he thought, than anything in the dentist's waiting-room. There was a sort of counter, with bright brass rails, and a ground-glass box with an office boy inside it, the unprecedented and un-business-like apparition of Mrs. May, with a timid request to see Mr. Maidment or Mr. Hearst. One was dead and the other never came near the place. Holy demoralised the office boy, who retired upon his supports in the depths of the office. Thence the presently emerged a junior clerk, who, after certain questions, undertook to see if the acting-partner were in. Then came a time of stealthy and distrustful inspection on the part of the office boy, who, having regained his box, had gathered up his wits, began to suspect Johnny of designs on his situation. But at last Johnny and his mother were shown into an inner room, furnished with expensive austerity, where a gentleman of 30 or 35, himself expensively austere of mean, sat at a writing-table. The gentleman asked Mrs. May one or two rather abrupt questions about her dead husband, dates, and so forth, and referred to certain notes on his table after each answer. Then Nan offered him one of three papers which she had been fiddling in her hand since she first passed the street door, her marriage lines. Oh, ah, yes, yes, of course, said the gentleman with some change of manner. Of course, quite right. Best to make sure. Can't remember everybody. Sit down, Mrs. May. Come here, my boy. So you want to be an engineer, eh? Yes, sir, if you please. He never thought it would be quite so hard to get it out. Ah, plenty of hard work, you know. Not afraid of that, are you? No, sir. How old are you? Fifteen next month, sir. Get on all right at school? What standard? Past seventh, sir. Mrs. May handed over her other two papers, a character from the schoolmaster, and another from the rector. When the gentleman had read them. Yes, yes, very good. Very good indeed, he said. But you've not finished learning yet, you know, my boy, if you're to be an engineer. Fond of drawing. Yes, sir. And Nan May chimed in. Oh, yes, sir, very fond. Well, if you stick well at your drawing in the evenings and learn the theory, you'll be a foreman some day, perhaps a manager. It all depends on yourself. You shall have a chance to show us what you're made of. That's all we can do. The rest is for yourself, as I've said. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I'll try. And Mrs. May was audibly thankful, too, and confident of Johnny. Very well, it's settled. The gentleman rang a bell and bade the junior clerk, just sent for cotton. I've sent for the foreman, he went on. Whose shop you'll be in. He'll look after you as long as you behave well and keep up to your work. You won't see me very often, but I shall know all about you, remember. And he turned to his table and wrote, Presently there was a sudden thump at the door, which opened slowly and admitted the foremost part, it was the abdomen, of cotton the foreman. He was of middle height, though he seemed short by reason of his corpulence, deliberate in all his movements, yet hard, muscular and active. He turned, as it were on his own axis, at the edge of the door, shut it with one hand, while he dangled a marine peaked cap in the other, and looked with serene composure from over his scrub of gray beard, first at Mrs. May, then at Johnny, and last at his employer. Oh, cotton! the gentleman said, writing one more word, and letting drop his pen. This lad's name is John May. I expect you'll remember his father. Bad accident, I believe, in the heavy turning shop. Died, in fact, this with a slight glance at Nan May. The foreman turned, turned his whole person, for his head was set on his vast shoulders with no visible neck between, bent a trifle, and inspected Johnny as he would have inspected some holy novel and revolutionary piece of machinery. Yes, he said, with a slowly rising inflection, expressive of cautious toleration, as of one reserving a definite opinion. Yes. Well, he's come on as apprentice, and I'd like him to come into your shop. There'll be no difficulty about that, will there? No. Then you'd better take him down and tell the timekeeper. He may as well begin on Monday, I suppose. Yes. Tuned once more in an ascending scale, and with that the acting partner bade Mrs. May good morning, turned to his writing, and the business was over. Cotton the foreman put his cap on his head and led the way through the outer office, along a corridor, down the stairs and across the yard, with no indecent haste. It was a good distance to go, and Johnny was vaguely reminded of a circus procession that had once passed through Loudon, and that he had followed up for nearly three miles behind the elephant. Halfway across the yard the foreman stopped and made a half turn, so as to face Nan Mei as she came up. He raised an immense leathery fist, and jerked a commensurate thumb over his shoulder. That's the young Govner, he said in a hoarse whisper, with a confidential twitch of one cheek that was almost a wink. That's the young Govner, that is, smart young chap. Knowed him so I, he brought down his hand to the level of his lowest waistcoat button, twitched his cheek again, nodded, and walked on. The timekeeper inhabited a little wooden cabin just within the gates, and looked out up a pigeon-hole at all comers. Mr. Cotton put his head into this hole, a close fit, and when he withdrew it, the timekeeper, a grey man, came out of his side door and stared hard at Johnny. Then he growled, all right, and went in again. Six o'clock o' Monday morning, Mr. Cotton pronounced conclusively, addressing Mrs. Mei, six o'clock o' Monday morning, ere, with a downward jerk of his thumb, to make it plain that somewhere else would not do. Then, without a glance at Johnny, whom he had disregarded since they left the office, he turned and walked off. Johnny and his mother were opening the small door that was cut in the great gate, when Mr. Cotton stopped and turned. Morning, he roared and went on. Mother and boy went their way joyously. Here was one of Nan Mei's troubles dissolved in air, and as for Johnny, a world of wonders was before him. Now he would understand how steam made engines go, and all day he would see them going. He would make engines himself, in fact. And for this delightful pursuit he would be paid. Six shillings a week was what apprentices got in their first year, a shilling for every day of work. Next year he would get eight shillings and then ten and so on. And at twenty-one he would be a man indeed, an engineer like his father before him. More he was to draw. The gentleman had told him to draw in his spare time. The clang of hammers was a merry peel from the works that lined their way, and the hoots of steamships on the river made them a moving music. Nan Mei wondered to see such merry faces about the streets on the way home. Truly the place was changed, but perhaps, after all, it was no such bad place, even now. The street was quiet where they had seen the drunken woman, though two very small boys were still kicking a filthy slice of bacon about the gutter. But three streets beyond they saw her for a moment. For the black-guard boys had contrived to topple mother-born drunk into a hand-barrow, which they were now trundling along at such a pace that the bedraggled sufferer could do no more than lie and cling to the rails, a gasping uncleanly heap. Truly Emma Pace's punishment was upon her. Bessie brightened wonderfully at the news of Johnny's success, for she was thoughtful and old-fashioned, even among the prematurely saged girl-children of her class, and she had been fretting silently. Now she hopped about with something of her old activity. She reported that the next-door neighbour on the left had been persistently peeping over the wall, and that just before their arrival the peep had been accompanied by a very artificial cough meant to attract attention. So Mrs. Mei went into the backyard. Morning, Mum, said the next-door neighbour, a very red-faced man in a dungery jacket. Weather's cleared up a bit. I've been having half a day off, touching up things. He sank with a bob behind the wall and rose again with a paint-pot in his lifted hand. Bitter red paint any use to you? End of Chapter 10 Chapter 11 of To Lundantown This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. To Lundantown by Arthur Morrison Chapter 11 The red paint-pot and a blue one from the same quarter, together with a yellow one from the neighbours on the other side, a white one from an old light-man in the house behind, and a suitable collection of brushes subscribed by all three, were Johnny's constant companions till the end of that weary week. The shop shutters grew to be red with a blue border. The window frames were yellow, the wall beneath was white, so was the cornice above, and the door and the door-posts were red altogether, because the red paint went farthest, and the red pot had been fullest to begin with. Not only did the length of the job work off Johnny's first enthusiasm, but its publicity embarrassed him. Perch's conspicuously on a stepladder, painting a shop in such stirring colours as these, he was the sinister of all way-fearing folk, the target of whatever jibes their wits might compass. Three out of four warned him that the paint was laid on wrong side out. Some, in unkindly allusion to certain chance splashes, reminded him that he hadn't half-painted the window-pains, and facetious poise in piteous pantomime affected to be reduced to instant blindness by sudden knowledge of Johnny's brilliant performance, but he was most discomfited by those who merely stood and stared, invisible behind him, if only he could have seen them, but would not have been so bad. The oppressive consciousness that some contemptuous grown man behind and below, possibly a painter by trade, was narrowly observing every stroke of the brush, shook his nerve and enfeebled his execution. Most of these earnest spectators seemed to have no pressing business of their own, and their inspections were prolonged. One critic found speech to remark as he turned to go his way, Well, you are making a bloomin' mess up there! But most, as if at a loss for words by mere amazement, sheered off with, Well, blimey! It was discouraging to find that all these people could have done it so much better, and long before the job was finished, Johnny was sore, depressed, and very humble, as well as tired. Only one of all his witnesses offered help, and he was a surprising person, very tall, very thin, and very sooty from work, with splay feet, sloping shoulders, a long face of exceeding diffidence, and long arms, which seemed to swing and flap irresponsibly with the skirts of his long overcoat, and to be a subject of mute apology. He saw Johnny tiptoeing at the very top of the steps, making a bad shift to reach the corners. He stopped, looked about him, and then went on a step or two, stopped again, and came back with a timorous glance at the shop window. And when Johnny turned and looked, he said in a voice scarce above a whisper, Can't you reach it? Not very well. Let's come. And when Johnny descended, the long man with one more glance about the street, went up three steps at a time, and laid the paint on rapidly, many feet at a sweep. He came down and shifted the steps very easily with one hand, and they were heavy steps, went up again, and in three minutes carried the paint to the very end of the corners. Then he came down, with a sheepish smile at Johnny's thanks, and shambled as far as next door, where he let himself in with a latch key. And on Friday at dinnertime, perceiving Johnny's progress from his window on the upper floor, he was a lodger, it seemed. He came stealthily down and gave the corners another coat. On Saturday morning the shop was opened in form, though Johnny's painting was not finished till dusk. Very little happened. A few children stopped on their way and stared in at the door. The first customer was a boy from among these, who came in to beg a piece of string and infested harbour lane for the rest of the day, swinging a dead rat on the end of it. Our was passed, and Nan Mei's spirits fell steadily. A few pounds, a very few, they could scarce be made to last three weeks, was all her reserve, and most of her scanty stock was perishable. If it's spoiled it could never be replaced, and unless people bought it, spoil it must. What more could she do? Industry, determination, and all the rest were well enough, but when all was said and done, nothing could make people come and buy. Near noon the second customer came, a little girl this time. She wanted a bottle of ink for a half penny. There were half a dozen little bottles of ink in a row in the window, but the price was a penny, so the little girl went away. It was a dull dinner that day. Bessie invented ingenious conjectures to account for the lack of trade, and prophesied a change in the afternoon, or the evening, or perhaps next week, or at latest the week after. Her mother could not understand. Customers came to other shops, why not to this one? She had seen nothing of Uncle Isaac since he had come to Harbour Lane, though he knew where to find her. She had hoped he would lend a hand with the painting, or with the display of the stock, but no doubt he had been too busy. True, Johnny thought he had seen him once from the steps, some way down the street, but that must have been a mistake, for Uncle Isaac would not have come so near them without calling, nor would he have bolded instantly round the nearest corner at sight of the boy and his work, as Johnny had fancied he had. The afternoon began no better than the morning. Nobody came but a child, who asked for six penneth of coppers, till about four. Then a hurried woman demanded a penneth of mixed pickles in a saucer, and grumbled at the quantity. She wouldn't come into the shop again at any rate. A threat so discomposing, for was not the woman the first paying customer, that for hours, then may could not forgive herself for her liberality, though indeed she gained but a weak fraction of her farthing by the transaction. Half an hour more went, and then there came a truly noble customer. He looked like a bricklayer, and he was far from sober. So far indeed that Johnny, on the steps, spying the mazy sinuosity of his approach, got a step lower and made ready to jump in case of accidents. But the bricklayer, conscious of the presence of many ladders, steered wide into the roadway, and there stopped, fascinated by the brilliancy before him. Some swaying moments of consideration resolved him that this was a shop, and after many steps up the curve, and as many back in the gutter, he picked a labyrinthine path among the myriad ladders, narrowly missing the real one as he went, shouldered against the wet door post, and stumbled toward the counter. Here he regarded a bladder of lard with thoughtful severity, till Nan may timorously ask what he wanted. Shum for Kidge, he replied sternly to the lard. Shum for Kidge. For some moments his scowl deepened. Then he raised his hand and pointed. What washer? he demanded. Lard. Lardu. He plunged his hand into his trousers pocket. Lardu, how much? Seven pounds half per knee a pound. All right, he's old of it. He reached an unsteady hand, imperiling bottles, but Nan may was quicker, and took the bladder of lard from its perch. How much? she asked. How much? That's what I want now. You give it here, go on. His voice rose disputatably, and he fell on the bladder of lard with both hands. How much? Nan reflected that it weighed more than three pounds, and that she had paid Mr. Duncan eighteen pence for it. Two shillings, she said. Two shillings, all right. And instantly what remained of the new customer's week's wages was scattered about the counter. Mrs. May took two shillings and returned the rest, which with some difficulty was thrust back into the pocket, and the new customer, after looking narrowly about him in search of his purchase, and at last discovering it under his arm, sallied forth with a wipe against the other doorpost, and continued his winding way. A solemn and portentous bricklayer, with red paint on his shoulders and whiskers, and a bladder of lard that slipped sometimes forward and sometimes backward from his embrace, and was a deal of trouble to pick up again. Here was a prophet of six pence at a stroke, unlikely as the chance was to recur, and it raised Nan's spirits, unreasonably enough. Still the bricklayer brought luck of a sort, for there were three more customers within the next hour, two bringing a half-penny and one a penny, and in the evening five or six came, one spending as much as four pence. This was better, perhaps, but poor enough. At ten that night Nan may reckon to profit for the day at ninth and farthing, including the bricklayer's six pence, and she was sick with waiting and faint with fear. At half-past ten Uncle Isaac turned up. He said, been painting, might elated on a bit evener, there's right ways of laying on paint, and there's wrong ways, and one way ain't the same as the other. He raised his finger at Johnny instructively. Far from it and contrary, there's a great difference. Uncle Isaac paused, and no further amplification of his proposition occurring to him. He turned to Mrs. May. How's trade, he asked. Nan may shook her head sadly. Very bad, Uncle, she said, hardly any at all. And she felt nearer crying than ever since the funeral. Ah, said Uncle Isaac, sitting on a packing case, empty but intended to look full. Ah, what you want's enterprise. Enterprise, that's what you want. What is it as stimulates trade and encourages prosperity to, to the latest improvements? Enterprise. Why is commercial opulent-ness took, at least, wafted, commercial opulent-ness wafted round the old world? Consequence of what? Consequence of enterprise. Uncle Isaac tapped the counter with his forefinger, and gazed solemnly in Nan may's troubled face. Consequence of enterprise. He repeated slowly, with another tap. Then he added briskly, with a glance at the inner door. Add your supper. No, Uncle, Nan answered. I never thought of it. But now you're here, perhaps you'll have a bit with us. Ah, don't mind if I do, Uncle Isaac responded cheerfully. That looks like a nice little bit of bacon. Now a rasher off that, and a hag. Got a hag? Oh, yes. He saw a dozen in a basin. A rasher off that, and a hag or two, would be just the thing. With a drop of beer, wouldn't it? Johnny fetched the beer, and Uncle Isaac had two rashes and four eggs, and he finished with a good solid piece of bread, and the first slice, a large one, out of the Dutch cheese from the counter. Nan May made no more than a pretense at eating a little bread and cheese. When at last the jug was empty, and Uncle Isaac was full, he leaned back in his chair, and for some minutes exercised his lips in strange workings and twistings, with many incidental clicks and sooks and fizzes. While he benignedly contemplated the angle of the ceiling, when at last the display flagged, he brought his gaze gradually lower till it rested on the diminished piece of bacon. None so bad that bacon, he observed, putting his head aside with a critical regard. Though perhaps rather more of a breakfast specie than a supper, he leaned his head to the other side, as one anxious to be impartial. Yes, he went on thoughtfully. More of a breakfast specie, as you might say. Then after a pause he added, with the air of one announcing a brilliant notion. I believe, yes. I do believe I'll try a bit for breakfast tomorrow morning. If you like, Uncle, Nan answered a little faintly. But, but, timidly, I was thinking perhaps it'll make it look rather small to to put on the counter. So it would, so it would, Uncle Isaac admitted frankly, and indeed the remaining piece was scarce of full rash's capacity. Pity to cut it, as you say, Nan. Thanks, I'll just wrap it up as it is. It'll come in for Monday too, and that large bit of streak he'll look a deal more noble or on the counter. Uncle Isaac's visit swept away the day's profits and a trifle more. But certainly, Uncle Isaac must not be offended, now that things looked so gloomy ahead. Bessie lay and strained her wits far into the night, inventing comfortable theories and assurances, and exchanging them with her mother for others as hopeful. But in the morning each pillow had its wet spot. End of Chapter 11 Chapter 12 of To London Town This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. To London Town by Arthur Morrison Chapter 12 But Monday saw another beginning. Johnny must rise soon after five now to reach his work at six. But on this the first morning he was awakened eager at half past four. Early as he was his mother was before him, and as he pulled his new white ducks over his everyday clothes, he could hear her moving below. Nan may was resolved that the boy should go out to begin the world fed and warm at least, and as cheerful as might be. For this one morning Johnny felt nothing of the sleepy discomfort of any house in pitch dark a little before five. Two breakfasts were ready for him, one for the present moment when she scarce touched for he was excited, and another in the basin and a red handkerchief for use at the workshop, with a new tin can full of coffee. For the half hour allowed for breakfast would scarce suffice for the mere hurrying home and hurrying back again, and the full hour at midday would give him bare time for dinner with his mother. Bessie was infected with the excitement, and stumped downstairs to honour Johnny's setting out. He left the shop door half an hour too soon with a boot flung after him. The darkness of the street seemed more solid at this hour than ever at midnight, and it almost smothered the faint gas lights. Now and again a touch of sleet came down the wind, and a little dirty half melted snow of yesterday made the way sloppy. Nobody was about to view the manly glory of Johnny's white ducks, and he was not sorry now that his overcoat largely hid them, for the wind was cold, and he reflected with satisfaction that the warming of his coffee on a furnace would smoke the inglorious newness off the tin can ere he carried it home in the open day. The one or two policemen he met regarded him curiously, for workmen were not yet moving, but the coffee stall was opened by the swing bridge, and here the wind came over the river with an added chill. The coffee stallkeeper had no customers, and on the bridge and in the straight street beyond it nobody was in sight. Till presently a small figure showed indistinctly ahead, and crossed the road as though to avoid him. It moved hurriedly, keeping timidly to the wall, and Johnny saw it was a girl of something near his own age. He tramped on, and the girl, once past, seemed to gather courage, turned, and made a few steps after him. At this he stopped, and she spoke from a few yards off. She was a decently dressed and rather a pretty girl, as he could see by the bad light of the nearest lamp, but her face was drawn with alarm, and her eyes were wet. Please, have you seen a lady anywhere? she asked tremulously. Ill! Johnny had seen no lady, ill or well, and when he said no, the young girl, with a weak thank you, hastened on her way. It was very odd, thought Johnny, as he stared into the dark where she vanished. Who should lose a lady, ill, in Blackwall streets at this time of a pitch-dark morning? As he thought, there rose in his mind the picture of Grandad, straying and bloody and sick to death, that night that seemed so far away, thought was but a month or two since. Maybe the lady had wandered from her bed in some such plight as that. Johnny was sorry for the girl's trouble, and would have liked to turn aside and join in her search, but this was the hour of great business of his own, and he went his way about it. The policemen were knocking at doors now, rousing workmen who answered with shouts from within. An old night watchman, too, scurrying his hardest, for he had farther to go than the policemen, banged impatiently at the knockers of the more conservative and old-fashioned. And as Johnny neared Maidmont and Hurst's, the streets grew busy with the earliest workmen, those who lived farthest from their labour. Maidmont and Hurst's gate was shut fast. He was far too soon. He tried the little door that was caught in the great gate, but that was locked. He wondered if he ought to knock, and did venture on a faint tap of the knuckles, but he might as well have tapped the brick wall. Moreover, a passing apprentice observed the act and go forth aloud. Try down the air, he made, was his advice. So Johnny stood and waited, keeping the new tin can where the gaslight over the gate should not betray its unsmoked brightness, and trying to look as much like an old hand as possible. But the passing men grinned at each other, jerking the heads toward him, and Johnny felt that somehow, he was known for a greenhorn. The apprentices, immeasurable weeks ahead of him in experience, flung ironic advice and congratulation. Hooray! Extra quarter for you, mate! Two or three said, one earnestly advising him to chalk it on the guy for that, so as he won't forget. And still another shouted in tones of extravagant indignation. What? Only just come? They've been awaiting for you ever since the pub shot. At length the timekeeper came, sour and grey, and tugged at a vertical iron bell handle which Johnny had not perceived. The bell brought the night watchman, with a lantern and a clank of keys, and the timekeeper stepped through the little door with a growl in acknowledgement. He left the door jar, and Johnny, after a moment's hesitation, stepped in after him. Mr. Codham told me to come this morning, sir, he said, before the timekeeper had quite disappeared into his box. My name's May. The timekeeper turned and growled again, that being his usual manner of conversation. All right, he continued. You wait there till he comes in, then. And it was many months ere Johnny next heard him say so much at once. The timekeeper began hanging round metal tickets on a great board, studded with hooks, a ticket to each hook in numbered order. Presently a man came in at the door, selected a ticket from the board, and dropped it through a slot into what seemed to be a big money box. Then three came together, and each did the same. Then there came a stream of men and boys, and the board grew bearer of tickets and bearer. In the midst came Mr. Codham, suddenly appearing within the impossibly small wicket as by a conjuring trick. He trumped heavily straight ahead, apparently unconscious of Johnny. But as he came by he dropped his hand on the boy's shoulder, and, gazing steadily ahead, Well, me lad! he roared, much as though addressing somebody at a window of the factory across the yard. Good morning, sir, Johnny answered, walking at the form inside by compulsion. But the hand, however friendly, was the heaviest and strongest he had ever felt. Mr. Codham went several yards in silence, still gripping Johnny's shoulder. Then he spoke again. Mother, all right. He asked fiercely, still addressing the window. Yes, sir, thank you. He walked on and entered the factory. This year, said Mr. Codham, turning on Johnny at last and glaring at him sternly. This year's the big shop. Every work. There's a big cylinder for the new Red Star boat. He led his prisoner through the big shop, this way and that, among the great lathes and planers, lit by gas from the rafters, and up a staircase to another workshop. Here we are, said Mr. Codham, releasing Johnny's shoulder at last. Yeah, you fool, are ya? Know what a lave is, don't ya? And beltlin' and shaftin'? All right, needn't do nothin' for breakfast. Look about and see things, and don't get in mischief. I got me eye on ya. The foreman left him, and began to walk along the lines of machines, and the nearest apprentice grinned at Johnny and winked. Johnny looked about as the foreman had advised. This place, where he was to learn to make engines, and where he was to work day by day till he was 21 and a man, was a vast room with skylights in the roof. Though this latter circumstance he did not notice till after breakfast, when the gas was turned off, and daylight penetrated from above. A confusion of heavy raftering stretched below the roof, carrying belted shafting everywhere, and every man bent over his machine or his bench, or Codham was a sharp gaffer. Johnny watched the leading hand scribing curves on metal along lines already set out by punctured dots. "'Line in off,' said the leading hand, seeing the boy's interest, and then leaning over to speak because of the workshop din. "'Center dabs,' he added, pointing to the dots. That, at least, Johnny resolved not to forget. Lining off and centre dabs.' For some reason, perhaps the usual reason, perhaps another. Three or four of the men were losing a quarter that Monday morning, and some of them were men with whom young apprentices had been working. Consequently, Codham, in addition to his general supervision, had to keep particular watch on these mentalist lads, and Johnny learned a little from the gaffer's remarks. "'Well, what'd you do with that file?' he would ask of one. "'You ain't a playing catch cradle now, me lad. Look here, keep a level like this. It's a file, and ain't a rockin'orse.' Or he would come behind another who was chipping by-metal and using a hammer with more zeal than skill. He would watch for a moment, and then break out. "'Well, you are fond of exercise, I must say. Good job you're strong enough to stand it. I ain't. My constitution won't allow me to hold a hammer like this here. This with the burlesque of the lad's stiff grasp and whole arm action. It had knocked me up, being a more delicate sort of person. His arm was near as thick as the boy's waist. "'I hold a hammer like this, see?' And he took the shaft end loosely in his fingers, and hammered steadily and firmly from the wrist. Johnny saw that and remembered. Again, half an hour later, stopping at the elbow of another repentice, a little older than the last. "'Come,' said the foreman. "'That's a new idea, that is. Taking off the skin from Cast Iron with a brand new file. I hope you've patented it, and I hope you won't come and want another file in about half an hour, because if you do, you won't get it.' Where at Johnny, astonished to learn that Cast Iron had a skin, resolve not to forget that you shouldn't take it off with a new file, and made a mental note to ask somebody why. Presently, as he came by the long fitting bench, Johnny grew aware of a fitter, immensely tall and very thin, who grinned and nodded in furtive recognition. It was indeed the next door lodger who had painted the cornice. He was very large, Johnny thought, to be so shy. He positively blushed as he grinned. "'You come to this shop?' he asked in his odd whisper, as he stooped to judge the fit of his work. "'On bedding down a junk ring, perhaps the gaffer will put you to help me after breakfast.' Bedding down a junk ring sounded advanced and technical, and Johnny felt taller at the prospect. He would learn what a junk ring was probably when he had to help bed it down.' Meanwhile, he watched the tall man as he brought the metal to an exact face. "'Stop into breakfast,' the man asked as he stooped again. "'Yes. Some of the boys will try a game with you, perhaps. Don't mind a little game, do you?' "'No.' "'Ah, I couldn't stand it when I was a lad. Made me miserable. When you go in the Smith's shop to get your breakfast, look about you if there's special kind finding your seat. Up above, for instance.' Johnny left the long man and presently observed that the foreman was not in the shop. There was an instant slackness perceivable among the younger and less steady men, for the leading hand had no such authority as caught him. One man at a lathe, throwing out his gear, examined his work, and turned to Johnny, said, "'Look here, me lad. I want to true this here bit. Just you go and ask Sam Wilkins, that man up at the end there, in the surge-jacket. Just you go and ask him for the round square.' Johnny knew the tool called the square, used for testing the truth of finished work, though he had never seen a round one. Albeit he went off with alacrity. But it seemed that Sam Wilkins hadn't the round square. It was Joe Mills over in the far corner. So he tried Joe Mills. But he, it seemed, had just lent it to Bob White at the biggest shaping machine near the other end. Bob White understood perfectly, but thought he had last seen the round square in the possession of George Walker, whereas George Walker was perfectly certain that it had gone downstairs to Bill Cook in the big shop, doubting nothing from the uncommonly solemn faces of Sam and Joe and Bob and George. Johnny set off down the stone stairs, where he met the ascending gaffer on his way back from the pattern-maker's shop. "'Hello, boy,' he said. "'Where are you going?' "'Downstairs, sir, for the round square.' Mr. Cotton's eyes grew more prominent, and there were certain sounds as of an imprisoned bullfrog from somewhere deep in his throat. But his expression relaxed not a shade. Presently, he said, "'No, what a round is.' "'Yes, sir.' "'No, what a square is.' "'Yes, sir.' "'Supposed somebody wanted a round square drawed on paper. "'What would you do?' There was another internal croak, and somehow Johnny felt emboldened. "'I think,' he said, with some sly hesitation. "'I think I'd tell him to do it themselves.' Mr. Cotton croaked again, louder, and this time with a heave of the chest. "'All right,' he said. "'That's good enough.' "'Better say something like that to them as sentia. "'That's a very old hour, that is.' He resumed his heavy progress up the stairs, turning Johnny round by the shoulder and sending him in front. There were furtive grins in the shop, and one lad asked, "'Got it?' In a voice cautiously subdued. But just then the bell rang for breakfast. Most of the men and several of the boys made their best pace for the gate. These either lived near, or got their breakfasts at coffee shops, and the half hour began and ended in haste. The few others, more leisurely, stayed to gather their cans and handkerchiefs, some to wipe the hands on Cotton waste, that curious, tangled stuff by which alone Johnny remembered his father. As for him, he waited to do what the rest did, for he saw that his friend, the long man, had gone out with the patrons of coffee shops. The boys took their cans and clattered down to the Smith's shop, Johnny well in the rear, for he was desirous of judging from a safe distance what form the little game might take that the long man had warned him of, in case it came soon. But a way would fate preserve him from booby-traps that morning. In the first place he had come in a cap, and so for-fended one ordeal. For it was the etiquette of the shop among apprentices, that any bowler hat brought in on the head of a new lad must be pinned to the wall with the tangs of many files. Since a bowler hat, here a lad had four years at least of service, was a pretension, a vain glory, and an outrage. Next his lagging saved his new docks. The first lads down had prepared the customary trap, which consisted of a seed of honour in the best place near the fire, a seat doctored with a pool of oil and situated exactly beneath the rafter on which stood a can of water taken from a lathe, a string depending from the can, with its lower end fastened behind the seat, so that the victim accepting the accommodation would receive a large oily embellishment on his new white docks, and by the impact of his back against the string induce a copious christening of himself in his entire outfit. Put a chance that an elderly journeyman from the big shop, old Ben Kotz, appeared on the scene early, wiping his spectacles on his jacket lining as he came. He knew nothing of a fresh prentice, saw nothing but a convenient and warm seat, and hastened to seize it. The lads were taken by surprise. No, not there, shouted one a few yards away. First come, first served me, lad, chuckled old Ben Kotz, as he dropped on the fatal spot. Here I am, and here I— With that the can fell, and Johnny at the door was astonished to observe a grey-headed workman with a pair of spectacles in his hand and a vast oily patch on his white overalls, dripping and dancing and swearing and smacking wildly at the heads of the boys about him, without hitting any. There were no more tricks that breakfast time. For when at length old Ben subsided to his meal, he put a little pile of wedges by his side to fling at the first boy of whose behaviour he might disapprove, and as his spectacles were now on his nose, and his aim thus aided was known to be no bad one, and as the wedges furthermore were both hard and heavy, breakfasts were eaten with all the decor impossible in a Smith's shop. Johnny's new can was satisfactorily blackened, and his breakfast was well-disposed of. Such youth has tried him with verbal chaff he answered as well as he might, though he had as yet little of the Cockney Boy's readiness, and at last the bell rang again and the breakfasters went back to work. Mr. Cotton, casting his glance about the shop in search of the simplest possible job for Johnny to begin on, with the steady man at hand to watch him, stopped as his gaze reached long hicks and sent Johnny to help him with his bolts, and so Johnny found the tall man's surmise verified, and the tall man himself received him with another grin, a little less shy. He set him to running down bolts and nuts, showing him how to fix the bolt in a vise, and work the nut on it with a spanner. Johnny fell to the task enthusiastically, and so the morning went. End of Chapter 12 Chapter 13 of Two London Town This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by John Brandon. To London Town, by Arthur Morrison. Chapter 13 When Nan May opened shop, she saw that men were pulling down as much of the shipyard wall opposite as stood between two chalk lines. She thought no more of the thing at the time, not guessing how nearly it concerned her. For this was to be a new workman's gate to the shipyard, and passing workman might change the fortunes of a shop. For that day, however, there was no sign, but the demand of a bricklayer's laborer for a pan-earth of cheese. It was as bad a day as Saturday in the matter of trade. Indeed, there was no drunken man to buy lard, and the woman's heart grew heavier as the empty hours went. Bessie stood at the back parlor door, pale and anxious, but striving to lift a brave face. Before one o'clock, there was dinner to be prepared, not that either Bessie or her mother could eat, but for Johnny. And at a quarter past one, both met him at the door as cheerfully as they could. And indeed, they were eager to hear of his fortunes. They wondered to see him coming with the long man who lived next door, and the long man for his part was awkward and nervous when he saw them. At first he hung back, as though to let Johnny go on alone, but he changed his mind and came striding ahead hastily, looking neither to right nor to left, and plunged in at his door. Johnny was hungry and in high spirits. He and long hicks, it seemed, had been bedding down a junk ring for a piston, Johnny easing the bolts and nuts and long hicks doing the other work. He said nothing of the round square, but talked greatly of slide valves and cranks, till Bessie judged him a full engineer already. Between his mouthfuls he illustrated the proper handling of hammer and file, and reprehended the sinful waste of spoiling the surface of a new file on the outer skin of a fresh iron casting. It cheered Nan-May to see the boy taking so heartily to his work, through all her secret dread that she might lack the means to keep him at it. Johnny glanced anxiously at the clock from time to time, and at last declared that he must knock for long hicks, who was plainly forgetting how late it was. And in the end, he rushed away to disturb the twelve-man, ten minutes too soon, and hurried off to Maidment and Hearst's, there to take his own new metal ticket from the great board and drop it duly into the box. The afternoon went busily at the factory, and busy days followed. Johnny acquired his first tool, a steel foot-rule. And carried it in public places, with a full quarter of its length visible at the top of its appointed pocket. It was the way of all young apprentices to do this. The rule, they would say, thus being carried convenient for the hand. But it was an exact science among the observant to judge a lad's experience inversely by scale of the inches exposed, going at the rate of half an inch a year. A lad through two years of his time would show no more of his rule than two inches. By the end of four years, one of these inches would have vanished. As his twenty-first birthday approached, the last inch shrank to a mere hint of bright metal, and nobody ever saw the foot-rule of a full journeyman except he were using it. Johnny's christening, postponed by the accident of old Ben Cutts, came when he was first put to a small lathe to try his hand at turning bolts. For when returning from breakfast, he belted his lathe. He did not perceive that the water can had been tied to the belt. Realizing it, however, the next instant, when it flew over the shafting and discharged the water on his head. Then he was free of the shop, suffering no more than the rest from the workshop pranks habitual among the younger lads and joining in them, gammoning newer lads than himself with demands for the round square, and oppressing them with urgent messages to testy gaffers that a cockroach had got in the Fufu valve, that the donkey man wanted an order for a new nosebag and the like. Grew able, moreover, in workshop policy making good interest with the shopkeeper, whom might sometimes oblige, with the loan of a hammer. For a lost hammer meant a fine of three and sixpence, and when yours was stolen, everybody stole everybody else's hammer, a borrowed one would tide you over till you could steal another. Making friends, too, with a tool-smith, at a slight expense in drinks, though able to punish him also if necessary, by the secret bedevilment of his fire with iron borings. Learn to manufacture an apparent watercrack by way of excuse for a broken file, a watercrack made with a touch of grease well squeezed between the broken ends. In short, became an initiated printeth engineer. In the trade itself, moreover, he was not slow, and Mr. Cottom had once mentioned him, though Johnny did not know it, as none so bad a boy, one as can work his own head. Until his first enthusiasm had worn off, he never ceased from questioning long hicks, in his hours of leisure, on matters concerning steam engines, so that the retiring hicks grew almost out of touch with the accordion that had been the solace of his solitude. The tall man had never met quite so inquisitive an apprentice. Engineering was in the blood, he supposed. He had guessed the boy's mother and engineer's wife when first Johnny came to his bench. Because of the extra button, Nan may have been careful to sew on his jacket cuff, a button used to tighten the sleeve that it might not catch the driver on a lathe. It was early in Johnny's experience. Indeed, he had been scarce a fortnight at the engine shop, when a man coming in from an outdoor job just before dinner told Cottom the foreman that an old friend was awaiting him at the gate, looking for a job. And who's the old friend? asked Cottom, severely distrustful. Mr. Henry Butson Esquire, the man answered with a grin. What? Butson? The gaffer ejaculated and his eyes grew rounder. Butson, again? Ah, damn me! I'd as soon have a brass monkey, and Mr. Cottom stumped indignantly up the shop. Singler that observed a laborer who was helping an erector with a little yacht engine near Johnny's bench. Singler, like what I heard the gaffers say at Lumley's when Butson wanted a job there. What? says he. Butson? Why, I'd rather have a chainy dog off my grandmother's metal piece, he says. He wouldn't spoil castings, he says. There were grins between the men who heard, for it would seem that Mr. Butson was not unknown among them. But when Johnny told his mother at dinner, she thought the men rude and ignorant, and she was especially surprised at Mr. Cottom. For some little while Johnny wondered at the girl who was hunting for a sick lady in the street on that dark Monday morning. He looked out for her on his way to and from his work, resolved if he met her to ask how the search had fared and how the lady was. But he saw nothing of her, and the thing began to drop from his mind. Till a Saturday afternoon, when he went to see a new ram launched, for halfway to the shipyard he saw a pretty girl, and surely it was the same. In no tears nor trouble now, indeed, but most disconcertedly composed and dignified, yet surely the same. Johnny hesitated and stopped, and then most precipitately resumed his walk. For truly this was a very awful young person, icily unconscious of him, her casual glance flung serenely through his head and over it. Perhaps it wasn't the same after all, and if not, well it was lucky he had said nothing. Nevertheless his inner feeling was that he had made no mistake. More that the girl remembered him, but was proud and would not own it. It didn't matter, he said to himself. But the afternoon went a little flat. The launch was less interesting than one might have expected. There was a great iron hull, tricked out with flags, and when men knocked away the dog shores with sledgehammers, the ship slid away, cradle and all, into the water. There wasn't much in that. Of course, if you knocked away the dog shores, the ship was bound to slide, plainly enough. That wasn't very interesting. Johnny felt vaguely resentful of the proceedings, but still he wondered afresh at the lost lady who was ill out of doors so early in the morning. End of Chapter 13, Recording by John Brandon Chapter 14 of To London Town This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Gray Clayton To London Town by Arthur Morrison Chapter 14 But this launch was when Johnny's Prentice teeth were cut, when the running down of bolts and pins was beneath his notice, and he could be trusted with work at a small nibbling machine, when he had turned stop valve spindles more than once, and felt secretly confident of his ability to cut a screw. Meantime, history was making at the shop. Very slowly at first it is true. The holly had been made the most of, but it seemed to attract not at all. Peniths and Haipeths were most of the sales, and even they were few. Nan May grew haggard and desperate. Uncle Isaac had called once soon after the opening Saturday, but since had been a stranger. He had said that he was about to change his lodgings, he was a widower, but Nan knew nothing of his new address. In truth, such was Uncle Isaac's tenderness of heart, that he disliked the sight or complaint of distress, and in the manner of many other people of similar tenderness, he betook himself as far as possible from the scene whereof, and kept there. It was within a few days of Christmas when things seemed hopeless. Johnny indeed had never ceased to hope till now. He had talked of the certainty of struggling on somehow till his wages were enough for all. Indeed, even the six shillings a week seemed something considerable now, though he knew that the rent alone came to ten. But even Johnny's cheerfulness fell in the face of the intenser the more open tears of his mother and sister as the days wore on. Long Hicks found him a quieter, less inquisitive boy, and a duller help than at first, and dinner at home was a sad make-believe. Each knew that the other two were contrasting the coming Christmas with the last. Then Grandad was with them, Hale and Mary. To look out a window was to look through a world of frosty twigs to woody deeps, where the deer waited timmy and shadowy for the crusts flying out afar for them from the garden. Now, but there. But it was just at this desperate time that a change came, as by magic. The men who pulled down the wall at the opposite side of the street gave place to others who built a mighty brick pier on each side of the opening, a pier designed to carry its half of the new gate. But ere the work was near complete, men and boys from the yard found it a convenient place to slip out and in at on breakfast time or dinnertime errands. Now, it chanced at the time that one of these men was in a domestic difficulty, a difficulty that a large part of the eight or nine hundred men of the shipyard encountered in turn at more or less regular intervals. His wife inhabited the bedroom in company with a monthly nurse, while he roosted sleeplessly at night on a slippery horse-hair couch in the parlor, or wallowed in a jumble of spare blankets and old coats on the floor, spending his home hours by day in desolate muddling in the kitchen, lost and incapable, and abject before the tyranny of the nurse. On dark mornings he made forlorn attempts to rake together a breakfast to carry with him to work, but as he had taken no thought to put anything into the cupboard overnight, he found it no easy matter to extract to breakfast from it in the morning. So it came to pass that on the second day of his affliction this bedeviled husband, his hunger merely aggravated by the stale lumps of bread he had thought to make shift on, issued forth at the new gate in quest of breakfast. There was little time, and most of the shops were a distant off, but just opposite was a flaming little chandelier shop newly opened. It was thinly stocked enough, but it would be hard like indeed if he did not hold something eatable, and so Nan May's first customer that day was the starved husband. Got anything to eat, he asked, his ravening gaze piercing the bare corners of the shop. Got any bacon? Yes sir, Nan May answered, reaching for the insignificant bit of streaky that was all she had. Nah, cooked, I mean. And she got any coal-boiled ock? No sir. You ought to have some cooked ock, lots of rabbit in the yard. I can't eat that. The smith shops the other end of the yard, and I got nothing to toast it with. Ain't you got nothing else? Nan May grasped the situation and conceived an instant notion, for indeed she had inborn talent as a shopkeeper, though till now it had had no chance to show itself. Will you wait five minutes? she asked. Yes, he would wait five minutes, but no more. And he sat on the empty case from which Uncle Isaac had delivered his recommendation of enterprise. Nan May cut two rashes and retired to the shop parlor. In three minutes the hungry customer was hammering on the counter, declaring that he could wait no longer. Pacified by assurances from within, he resigned himself to a minute and a half more of patience. When Mrs May returned, with a massive sandwich, wherein the two rashes freshly frizzled, lay between two thick slices of bread. Lifting the top slice for a moment as a guarantee of good faith, Nan May exchanged the whole ration for threpence. If you'd like any cold-boiled bacon, sir, she said, I shall have some at one o'clock. He heard but was offered a trot with his sandwich. In five minutes Nan May's bonnet was on, and in five more Bessie was minding shop alone, while her mother hastened to Mr Duncan's for a hawk of bacon. Here was a possible chance of fortune, and Nan May was not a woman to waste a chance. Boiled and cooled, or cooled enough for the taste of hungry riveters, the hawk stood in a dish on the counter at one o'clock, flanked by a carving knife and fork. A card bearing the best ten that Bessie could draw advertised the price, and the first quarter-pound of slices was duly cut for the desolate husband who came back a little later for two ounces more, for he had been ill-fed for two or three days, and the new baby made an event, whereas some extra expense was natural. Boys came for two other quarter pounds, so that it was plain that the first customer had told others, and a loaf was cut up to go with the bacon. Mrs May announced the new branch of trade to Johnny when he came to dinner, and though as yet the returns were small enough, there was a new chance, and his mother was hopeful of it, so he went back to the lathe with a lighter heart. That night the riveters worked overtime, and the bacon was in better demand still. More, at night, two or three men took home a snack and paper for supper, and from that day things grew better daily. The hawk was finished by the afternoon of the next day, and the establishment was out of pickles, for men and boys who brought their own cold meat with them came now for pickles. Trade was better as the days went on, and Christmas, though it found them poor enough, was none so sad a festival after all. And in a month when the gate had been formally opened for some time, and men streamed by in hundreds, three large hawks would really last two days, and there was an average profit of three shillings a hawk. More, the bread came in daily in batches at trade prices, and cheese and pickles went merrily, but what went best, and what increased in sale even beyond this point, was the bacon. Some customers called it ham, which pleased name May, for indeed her cooking hit the popular taste, and she began to feel a pride in it. Men who went home to dinner would buy bacon to take home for tea, and as many of these lived in Harbour Lane and thereabout, customs soon came from their wives in soap and candles, treacle and pepper and blacking. And May's trade instinct grew with exercise. She found a particular sort of bacon that best suited her purpose and her customers' tastes. She had regular boiling throughout the week. She quickly found the trick of judging the quality of whatever she bought, and she bought to the best use of her money. But here it must be said that Nan May, in her new prosperity, behaved towards one benefactor with an undutiful forgetfulness that was near ingratitude, for she bought almost nothing of Mr Duncan. He was reasonably grieved. True, she had begun by getting her first stock of him, but even then her critical examination of what was sent showed an unworthily suspicious attitude of mind. She even sent back things and demanded better, willfully blind to the fact that Mr Duncan could turn her out of the shop at a week's notice, if he pleased. Though indeed in his own mind he was not vindictive, for another new tenant would be hard to find. He even submitted to outrage, ending in actual loss and humiliation, for a large tin of mustard was Mrs May's first supply, and it was a tin from among those kept for sale to small shopkeepers, and not on any account to be sold from retail across Mr Duncan's own counter. But something in the feel and taste of this mustard did not please Nan May, though indeed she was not asked to eat it, and he went back. Now it chanced that Mr Duncan had taken on a new shopman that week, and this bungling incapable straightway began selling mustard from the returned tin. He had served three customers before his blood was perceived, and then the matter came to light purely because the third customer chanced to be a food and drug inspector. This functionary gravely announced himself as soon as he had good hold of the parcel, and handsomely offered the return of a third part of the mustard in a sealed packet. And the upshot was a fine of five pounds and costs from Mr Duncan, on the opinionative evidence of an analyst who talked of starch, and turmeric, and ginger, all very excellent substances as anybody knows. Truly it was a vexatious blow for Mr Duncan, and an unjust. But certainly the fault was not his, and to sell such an article retail was wholly against his principles. But he never complained, such was his forbearance, never spoke of his hardship for a soul in fact, except when he sacked the new assistant. It was even said that he had offered a reporter money to keep it out of the papers, and though it did get into the papers, and at good length too, yet the effort was kindly meant. But truly it could but give Mrs May Payne to learn that she had been the cause of Mr Duncan s misfortune, if she were a woman of any feelings at all. But as time went he began to doubt if she were, for her custom dropped away to nothing. The rate of which Bacon was handed in from a cart of a firm somewhere in the borough was scandalous to behold, before his very eyes too when he called for the rent. He employed a collector, but presently took to coming for the rent himself, that by his presence, and his manner, he might shame so thankless a tenant into some sense of decency, some order for Bacon a mustard. He coughed gently and stared very hard at the incoming goods, but Nan May was in no wiser bashed, and gave the calm in his directions with shameless composure. With his sympathetic stop full out, Mr Duncan asked how trade was, and Nan May answered, in a proper shopkeeper terms, that she mustn't grumble. With hums and purrs that led back through casual questions and answers to the stock he had first applied, and asked her how she had done with this and how that had gone off, but her answers were so artlessly direct and so inconsiderately truthful that good Mr Duncan was clean baffled, and reduced at last to a desperate hint that if anything were wanted he could take the order back with him, but he got no order. So he purred and hummed his way back into harbour lane and so away, and after a time the collector came in his stead. Mr Duncan resolved to wait. He had some doubts of the permanence of this new prosperity in the shop. The place had never brought anybody a living yet, and he should not feel convinced, for he had seen steady trade there for some time. Nan May's activities could always be kept from flagging by judicious increases of rent, and if the thing grew well established by her exertions, and were certain to continue a paying concern, why here would be a new branch of the trade. It needed but a week's notice, given unexpectedly, at a properly chosen time when no neighbouring shop was to let, and a good stroke of business was happily completed. Mrs May would vanish. A man would go in to manage at a pound or 25 shillings a week, and his quarters. There would be no interruption to trade for the outgoing tenant would naturally keep at work till the last minute to get every single one of them in. So Mr Duncan's business had to be done. Mr Duncan worked till the last minute to get every little she could, and Mr Duncan would have a new branch, paying very excellently, with no trouble to himself. Mr Duncan had established other branches in the same way, and found that a very simple and cheap arrangement. There was no risk of his own capital, no trouble in working up the trade, no cost of goodwill, and rent was coming in regularly while the tenant laboured with a zeal of a man who imagines he's working on his own benefit, and his children's. The important thing was to give nothing but a weekly tenancy, else the tenant might find some time to get going somewhere near at hand, and so perhaps deprive Mr Duncan of the just reward of his sagacity, foresight, and patience. But there was little difficulty in that matter. Beginners were timid and glad of a weekly tenancy fearing the responsibility of anything longer at first. And afterwards, well, things were in a groove and Mr Duncan was so very kind and sympathetic that it wasn't worthwhile to bother about a change. And by this method Mr Duncan, judiciously selecting his purchases in shop property, had acquired two or three of his half dozen branches and flourished exceedingly, which all kindly souls rejoiced to see. In the beginning he had no thought of this plan for the Harbour Lane Shop being mainly concerned to get a tenant, no matter in what trade, and indeed in his eye, the place was a little suited for chancellaries for anything. Even now he must wait, for he doubted the lasting quality of the new prosperity. Better a few years of forbearance than a too hurried seizure of a weakening concern to find little more than the same tenant to shop on his hands after all. And if it seemed that the trade owed anything to the personal qualities and connections of Mrs May, well, it will be a simple thing to keep her on to manage instead of a man. It will be an act of benevolence moreover to an unfortunate widow and come cheaper. But that was a matter for the future. Meanwhile, Nan May, active and confident, filled her shop by purchase from what's her over factor so best and cheapest and travellers called for her orders. The hungry husband who first came for cook bacon she always treated with a particular consideration, finding him good cuts. He ceased his regular visits in three weeks or less, and Nan May, taught by experience in her earlier London life, well guessed the cause of his coming. In the spring, three months or so later, great crowds thronged about the shipyard to see the launch of the battleship that over time had so long been worked on. And when the launch was over, this man and his wife, the man carrying the baby, came into the shop for something to celebrate the occasion at tea. The parents did not altogether comprehend Nan May's enthusiasm over the baby which she took from its father's arms and danced merrily about the shop while customers waited. But they set it down to admiration of its personal beauty, though truly it was an ordinary slobbery baby enough. But he went away down the street in great state, triumphantly stabbing at its mouth with the sugar stick gripped by one hand, and at its father's whiskers with that brandished in the other. End of Chapter 14, Recording by Gray Clayton To London Town by Arthur Morrison, Chapter 15 On a Saturday afternoon about this time, Uncle Isaac and his best black suit and very tall hat, and with the Turk's head walking stick in his hand, started out to see a foreman. Work was rather slack just now. Shipwright's work was slack everywhere, and the three holidays a week that once were the glory and boast of a free and independent shipwright were now apt to be a woeful compulsion. Uncle Isaac had been of late horror because idler than he liked, and in such case it was his way to seek the chance of meeting his foreman out of ours in order to a display of rhetoric, oblique flattery, and dexterous suggestion that might influence a distribution of short time that would be more favorable to the orator. He had wondered much as to the fortunes of Nan and her children, but as it has been said, his tenderness of heart kept him as far as possible from what he believed must now be a scene of sheer failure and destitution. If indeed the shop were not abandoned, and he was by no means anxious that his poor relations should discover his new lodgings. So now he picked his way with circumspection and with careful cogitation of a mental map of the streets, because a thoughtless straight forward journey would take him much too near to Harbor Lane. He crossed a swing bridge that gave access to 150 yards of roadway, ending in another swing bridge. But there was a crook in the road, and when he passed it, he found that the second bridge was open. Now in Blackwall, an open bridge did not mean one that the passenger could cross. That was a shut bridge. The open bridge was one swung aside to let a ship through, as a pair of gates is open for a carriage. So Uncle Isaac resigned himself to wait with an increasingly impatient group, till the bridge should swing into place again and give passage. He stood behind the chain that hung across the road to check traffic and meditatively rubbed his nose with the turks head. Presently he grew conscious of a rusty figure on his left, edging unsteadily a little nearer. Oh, do, Mr. Mundy, came a horse whisper, and mother borne drunk, a trifle less drunk than usual, but careful to grasp a post. Lear to Grammy Lear and waved her disengaged hand in his face, as one saluting a friend at a great distance. Uncle Isaac emitted a non-committal grunt, one that might be taken for an accidental cough by the bystanders, and sidled a foot or two away. For he too had known Emma Pacey in her more decent days, and with other acquaintances of that time was sometimes put to shifts to avoid her. Mother borne drunk, left the post, and followed a victim. Don't run away, she ejaculated unsteadily. I'm old pal, Mish Mundy. She thrust out a foul paw and dropped her voice coaxingly. Lenshy two-pence. Uncle Isaac gazed uneasily in another direction and took more ground to the right. The waiting passengers, glad of a little amusement, grinned one at another. Jere, Mr. Mundy. They said a loud voice with an imperious gesture. Jere, can't you answer when a lady speaks to you? Go on, governor, said a boy encouragingly, sitting on a post. Where's your manners? Take off your hat to the lady. And there was a snigger. Uncle Isaac shifted farther still and put a group of men between himself and his persecutor. But she was not to be so easily shaken off. Drawing herself up with a scornful majesty that was marred by an occasional lurch, and the bobbing of the tangled bonnet hanging over one ear, she came after Uncle Isaac through the passage readily made by the knot of men. Oh, so it's this, is it? She declaimed with a stately backward sweep of the arm. If a lady asks a trifling favor, you insult her. Ye low common scoundrel. This very slowly with a deep tragic hiss and a long pause. Then with a piercing note of appeal, Mr. Mundy, I demand an answer once more. Will you lend me two pins? The people, a small crowd by this time, forgot the troublesome bridge and turned to the new diversion. Give the lady two pins. Wrote the boy on the post in a deep bass. Arfapai did save her life. Uncle Isaac looked desperately about him, but he saw no sympathy. Dockmen, workmen, boys, all were agog to see so much fun as possible in the time at disposal. The pursuing harpy came a step nearer and bawled out. Will you lend me two pins? No, cried Uncle Isaac, driven to bay at last. No, I won't go away. Go away. You, you infamous creature. You want? No, not by no means. Go away. You want to be ashamed of yourself. You, you, you obstiferous faggot. Calls itself a gentleman. She said lifting her gaze to the clouds. Calls itself a gentleman. And uses such language to a lady. Shocking, said one in the hilarious crowd. What a wicked old bloke. Uncle Isaac gave another unquiet glance about him and moved another yard. The woman brought her eyes to earth again. And won't give me two pins. She proclaimed, and I'm an officer's widow. Never mind, lend me a penny. Only a penny, Mr. Mundy, do. There's a deer. Oh, you are a old duck. And mother-born drunks stumbled toward Uncle Isaac with affectionately extended arms. The crowd shrieked with joy, but Uncle Isaac turned and ran. One hand clapped to the crowd of his very tall hat. He would wait for no bridge now. But get away as best he could. The boys yelled and whistled, and kept up an easy trot with a quick scuttle of his short legs. Behind them came mother-born drunks tripping and floundering, spurred to infuriate chase by sight and sound of her unchanging enemies, the boys, and growing at every step more desirous of clawing at one of them than of catching Uncle Isaac. As for him, he dropped his hat once and nearly fell on it in looking behind, so he thrust it under his arm as he scurried past the bend in the road, and there despair seized him. For now the other bridge was open too. Which escape might he make first? At the end from which he had turned back, a great liner was being towed through at his snail's pace. Funnels and mast scarce seeming to move across the street, but at this end a small coaster went out briskly, and her mizzen was more than half over now. The woman was less than twenty yards off, but though she still staggered nearer, she was engaged with boys. Uncle Isaac put panic aside and resolved on dignity. He took his hat from under his arm and began to brush it on his sleeve. Mother-born drunk was in the hands of her enemies. Though there were fewer than usual, she swore and swiped at them, and they flung and yelled and danced. But they drew nearer Uncle Isaac, for it was a new variation in the sport to involve an old gentleman with his Sunday clothes on. Then shouted the woman breathlessly, Please, please, Mish Mundy, I'll give you in charge for annoying me. Cheer? She came very near and made a catch at him, when he dodged without regard to dignity. Mish Mundy, stand a drop, just a little drop for old times. If you don't stand a drop, I'll give me in charge. The coaster was through, and soon the bridge would shut. Uncle Isaac moved up toward the chain of mid-shouts and jibes. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, bold the woman, an old man like you annoying a lady. But the men were at the winch and the bridge swung. First of all, the impatient passengers. Uncle Isaac sprang on the moving iron, and got across a peril of life and limb ere the sections were still. He heard a louder shout of laughter from behind, where mother-born drunk, forgetting the chain, as she made for the bridge, had sprawled over it, where it hung low in the middle, and he quickened his pace. Now a chance that Johnny May had been taken that week to his first outdoor job on a large steamer. And full of the wonders of the ship, he had made interest with Shipy, who was officially called the shipkeeper, to bring Bessie on board on Saturday afternoon. The visit was a pure delight for both, with more than a spice of danger for Bessie in climbing gangways, companions, and greasy engine room steps. Indeed, the shipy carried her down the lower flights of these last. Johnny, explaining the prodigious engines, with all the extreme technicality of a new hand, and with much pride, pointed out the part whereon he, with the help of three or four journeymen, had been at work. Bessie stared and marveled, and her admiration for her brother waxed into reverence. For was he not an engineer, master of these massy, shining immensities, so amazingly greater than any engines she had dreamed of, so awful in their monstrous stillness? Bessie peeped along the tunnel of the great shaft, and then a minute after, up into the towering complexities above, and she was almost afraid, would have been afraid to stay there alone. They walked home gay and talkative, and Bessie's face had a light and a color that it had lacked since Johnny and granddad had seen it together. For she had seen great things and had walked in passenger saloons, more wonderful than all her palaces of romance. It struck Johnny for the first time in his life that Bessie was rather pretty, and as to her lameness, though some would call it a blemish, as it certainly was a misfortune, yet she carried it trembling, and he almost thought it suited her. And so they went, till at a corner, a hurried little man with a moon face ran into them at first, for he was brushing it again. Now, both Johnny and Bessie wore their best clothes and both looked happy and well, so at a glance Uncle Isaac guessed that things had gone all right at Harbor Lane after all, just as distress troubled and repelled him, so good fortune pleased his amiable genius and attracted his regards. So though he was still a little flushed and uneasy, he was glad of the encounter. He had been on well, it seemed, and and busy and all that, but how was trade at the shop? Johnny and Bessie told the tale of the new shipyard gate and of the cold bacon and pickles and the new prosperity. Uncle Isaac was greatly pleased. He was sorry, very sorry, he said, that he had not been able to call lately, but he would delay no longer, he would be round that very evening, and indeed he came and immensely approved of the bacon, and he came again and approved immensely of the cheese and the pickles, and whatever else there was for supper, and again after that, and usually carried something home for trial in the calmer mood of the morning. And thus family ties were made whole, and avuncular love continued. Just to think, Uncle Isaac would say with a wave of his fork, what a quantity of blessings you owe to my advice, Nan. What was my words, a counsel to your preparatory? Enterprise, says I. Enterprise is what you want. I says there's always money in enterprise. And what's the result? Enterprise represent and buy a lot of bacon, it's done the trick wonderful. But in regards to enterprise, why not call it M? CHAPTER XVI. With the spring the steady application of paint and harbor lane burst into a fury. Everywhere the houses and the flagstaffs and the fences took new coats of many colors, changing as the season went, and the paint-pot traffic fell into a vaster confusion. As tops were in, among the boys, the smell of paint grew day by day, and when the marble season began little else could be smelt. With July came Fairlob Friday, and Bessie wondered at the passing of a great model of a rigged ship on wheels drawn by horses, and filled with jubilant shipwrights on their way to Epping Forest, in accord with yearly custom. She had grown to consider the forest as a place so far off. Though indeed she knew the distance in mere miles, that it came almost as a surprise to see people starting out to drive there in a few hours with so slow a vehicle and to return the same night. Bob's small piece had written once or twice. He kept an eye on the empty cottage and looked out for a tenant. But he had never made a visit, as Nan May had asked him. The last news was that his bedridden old mother was worse and not expected to live. The trade went well, better than ever indeed, and scarce a month passed, but Nan May put a sovereign or two in the post office savings bank, and Uncle Isaac began secretly to look upon the shop in Harbour Lane as a convenient retreat for his later years. Already he took as many meals there as possible, for as he said, he could get no proper attention in his new lodgings. Of his old friend Mr. Butson, he had seen nothing for months. For Butson he knew had lost his birth on the steamboat, and had fallen on evil times, and Uncle Isaac never intruded on private griefs of this description. But later this year, when the anniversary of Johnny's apprenticeship was nearing, and when Johnny himself was nearer head taller, for he grew quickly now, Uncle Isaac saw Butson from afar as he crossed the docks, and Butson saw him. There was no escape, but Uncle Isaac with a grin and a wave of the hand tried to pass on hurriedly, as though urgent business claimed his time. But Mr. Butson rose from his ballard. Ballards had been his most familiar furniture for months now, and intercepted him. You've had about a year now to get that hurry over, he said, with something not unlike a sneer. If you're going that way, I'll come along, too. Got any backer? Uncle Isaac, with a bowtious air that scarce covered his reluctance, pulled out a screw of paper, and Mr. Butson filled his pipe. With some little way he smoked in silence for tobacco, was an uncommon luxury with him just now, and he enjoyed a succession of puffs, with no interruption. Then he said, working at Turton's now? No, Uncle Isaac replied with a slight cough. I know I ain't working there. Thought not. Looked out for you often, and you moved, too. Butson smoked again for a space, and then went on. I've had a pretty awful year, he said. Why, I was very near going stoken once or twice. He had not quite gone because the chief engineer always sent him ashore. Nice thing that, for a man am I bringing up. They walked on. Truly the bad year had left its marks on Mr. Butson. The souls with three quarters gone from his boots and the uppers were cracked. He wore a mixture of ordinary and working clothes, frayed and greasy and torn, and he shivered under a flimsy, dungaree jacket, buttoned so close to the neck as to hint an absence of shirt. His bowler hat was weather-beaten and cracked, and the brim behind was beginning to leave the crown because of rain rot. Presently, Uncle Isaac impaled to say something, asked. Then out all the time? Very near, got a job on a drawlick. But the chap began drawing me about something. I wasn't going to stand that, so I just walked out. Nothing else? Not much, one or two things I got on to, but they didn't last. Know the laundry over the cut? Well, they took me on there to run the engine and sacked me in a week. Said I was asleep, measly swine. Much the same at other places seemed to want to treat me like any commonfeller, but I showed them different to that. Ah, commented Uncle Isaac absently. He was wondering which way to lead the walk and how to take leave of his companion. But his invention was at a stand, and presently the other went on. Well, he said, You ain't got so much to say as you used. No any job you can put me on to? No, I don't, replied Uncle Isaac with gloomy simplicity. Trades bad, very bad. I've been working short time myself, and standing off day after day. Stood off to-day. Well, then lend us a bob. Uncle Isaac started and made the space between them a foot wider. Really, Mr. Butson, I... All right, make it to Bob then, if you'd rather. You've had more on that out of me one time and another. But, but I tell you, I'm unfortunate myself. I've been standing off day after day. Seems to me you're trying to stand off as much as you can now. Look here, Mr. Butson stood and faced Uncle Isaac. I'm broke, clean, broke, and worse. I'm hungry. It's... it's very bad, said Uncle Isaac. But why not go to your rich relations? Butson frowned, never mind them, he said. I'd rather try and tap you small property. What am I to do? I'm at the end of me tether, and have tried everything. Ah, Enterprise is what you want, Uncle Isaac said, being at a loss, what else to recommend? Enterprise. I recommended Enterprise before with wonderful results. Wonderful. And, and how about Marion? There's the landlady at the Mariner's Arms. She was always very friendly. And that's a life as ought to soochie. Kerr. Mr. Butson turned his head with a growl, and took to walking again, Uncle Isaac by his side. She'd want to make a pot man of me, and, and, well, that ain't much catch anyhow. If you won't lend me a bob, stand me a feed of some sort. Ain't add your tea, have ye? Plainly something must be sacrificed to Butson, and it's drunk Uncle Isaac that the cheapest article would be some of Nan May's bacon. So he said, well, I was thinking to pop and round to my nieces to tea. I'm sure she'd make you very welcome. All right. Same niece as give us tea over in the forest that time? Yes. She's round in Arbor Lane. The lamplighter scuffled past into thickening dusk, leaving his sparse trail of light spots along the dock wall. The two men came through streets where little sitting rooms, lighted as yet by fires alone, cheered Butson with promise of the meal to come. And when at last he stood in Nan May's shop. Now no place of empty boxes, but ranged close with bacon, cheese, candles, sausages, brawn, spiced beef, many eggs, and a multitude of sundries. There was some shadow of the old strut and sulky swagger, hanging oddly about the broken up Butson of these latter days. Uncle Isaac did it with an air, for an air was an inexpensive embellishment that won him consideration. Good evening, Nan. I've took the liberty, which I'm sure you'll call it a pleasure, to introduce a friend to tea which we well remember with happier circumstances. Mr. Butson has come to see you. Duller eyes than Nan May's would have seen Butson's fallen condition at a glance, and it afflicted her to know that while Fortune had favoured her, it had stricken him so sorely. She led the men, offering Butson a cordiality in some sort exaggerated by her anxiety not to seem to see his poor clothes, nor to treat him a wit the worst for his ill luck. As for Mr. Butson, he found a good fire and a clean hearth with an armchair beside it, in a better room than he had seen for long. Old Mr. May's photograph hung over the mantelpiece, and below it was the sole remaining butterfly trophy. A small glass case set when the old man was young. The ragged books that were Bessie's solace stood on a sideboard top, and Bessie herself, disturbed in reading, was putting one of them carefully in its place. The kettle sang on the hob. And when Johnny came from work, he was astonished to find a tea party of great admiration. Johnny was a big lad now, though he was scared sixteen years of age, and Mr. Butson condescended to shake hands with him, to condole with him on the choice of the wretched trade that had so ill supported himself, and to exchange a remark or two on the engineering topics of the week. But chiefly Mr. Butson attended to the meal. Nan May had never seen two men together eat such a meal as his. Plainly he was famished. She was full of pity for this unfortunate, so well brought up, bought the simple soul, so cruelly neglected by his well-to-do relations. She cut more slices of bacon and more, and still more bread and butter, quietly placing them to his hand, till at last he was satisfied. Mr. Butson was refreshed, filled his pipe again from Uncle Isaac's paper, and gave some attention to the conversation. But the conversation took to itself the property of rarely traveling far from Mr. Butson and his troubles. He had no false modesty about them. He had parted with almost all his clothes, and hadn't a shirt to his back. His tools were in pawn, and a man felt discouraged from looking for a job when his tools were put away, as he had no money to redeem them. But he would starve sooner than apply to his unnatural relations. He would take the help of strangers first. When at last Mr. Butson took leave, and went shivering into the gusty night, Uncle Isaac was careful to let him go alone and to remain himself in the shop parlor till his friend was clear away. But Nan May ran down the street after her departed guest. There were a few hurried words of entreaty in the woman's voice. Here, Mr. Butson, do you really must. And she scurried back breathless, and a trifle shame-faced. She reached across the counter and shot the till, ere she came into the shop parlor. Uncle Isaac looked up sharply in her face as she entered. But went on with his pipe. End of Chapter 16, Recording by John Brandon This visit was but for the first of many for Mr. Butson. Until after a very few months, he came as regularly as Uncle Isaac himself. He recovered his older parents a little at a time. One new article of clothing coming after another, but he seemed to have no luck in his quest for a job, or very little. What small success he found was ever brought to naught by the capteousness, even the rudeness of those in direction, or their unreasonable exactions in the way of work. To simple Nan May, he seemed the most shamefully ill-used of exemplars. Johnny and Bessie were less enthusiastic. Bessie said nothing, but avoided Mr. Butson as much as possible, sitting in the shop when he was in the back parlor. Johnny went for walks in the evening and grumbled, wondering why his mother encouraged this stranger, catching sappers, as he uncivially put it. Nan May was hurt at the expression, and feared that the workshop was spoiling Johnny's manners. News came from Bob's morpies that his poor old mother was dead at last, and buried in the high churchyard where Johnny's grandfather lay. Also, that Bob would come to London now, for a visit at the first opportunity. Now it was a fact that Bob's small piece, for a year or two, had been inclined to marry, though it was the thing he might never have thought of if he had seen less of Mrs. May. But he was a man of practical temperament, making up in his common sense for a great lack of agility of mind. There were certain obstacles he saw, obstacles that must remove of themselves, or not at all. First, his old mother. It would not seem fair to bring a wife to nurse a bedridden old woman. At any rate, it was scarce an attraction. More, the old woman herself had a dread of it. She feared the chance of being thought a burden by a newcomer, and would often beg Bob not to marry till she were gone, sometimes with the assurance that she would not belong now. Then, to say nothing of old Mr. May, there had been the children, who, familiar as he was with them, afflicted him in this particular matter alone, with an odd shyness. Again, when the old man died, the May family must needs come to London, if only that Johnny might go to his trade, while Bob's small piece must stay at the forest. But he was ever patient and philosophical. Now that some difficulties were gone, another arose. Nan May, all unaware of his slow designs, was settled in London, with ties of business. But perhaps after all, the business was not flourishing. Might be a burden better laid down. I'd asked to Johnny, he was earning wages of some sort now, and at most, his apprenticeship would be out when he was 21. Bob's small piece had reserved one piece of news till he could deliver it in person. This was that at last, he had let the cottage, at three and sixpence a week, to a decent woman and his wife. And so, wearing a new netcloth, and with three weeks' rent in his pocket, Bob's small piece appeared in Harbour Lane one spring morning. A vast astonishment of leather and velveteen, such as had never before brought a Black War housewife to attention, in the midst of her dusting and sweeping. No name was painted over the shop, but no stranger could pass its red and blue and green, without stopping to look. Least of all, Bob's small piece, in quest of the place itself. Nan May saw him and ran to the door, and Bessie, with her crutch and her book, met him half-way to the back-barler, gay and laughing. Bob regarded the well-filled shop, the neat room, with some mixture of feelings. Prosperity was excellent in its own way, but it made the new obstacle more formidable. Further, Mrs May, though she was pleased to hear that the cottage was let, and grateful enough for his trouble in letting it, was not so overjoyed as she might have been if the weekly three-in-sixpence had come at a time of pinching more. She handled the half-sovereign almost as disrespectfully as the sixpence, and dropped it into a part of her purse, where it fell among other gold. Poor Bob saw the obstacle not only bigger, but double, not merely was Nan May tied to London by her trade and by John's apprenticeship, but she was her well-to-do tradeswoman, with whom a poor forest-keeper could expect no more than respectful acquaintance. He half-feared she might even offer to pay him for his trouble with the cottage, and grew red and hot with the apprehension. But this affliction was spared him, though Nan did venture to ask if his care of her property had involved out-of-pocket expenses, a suggestion which Bob repudiated desperately. Neither Bessie nor her mother could understand why their visitor's manner was so constrained and awkward, nor why he announced that he must be going after sitting for twenty minutes. But that, of course, was not to be allowed. Johnny would be home in half an hour, and there would be some dinner, so Bob's more peace, who wanted to get away somewhere by himself and think things over, remained, and made his part of the conversation as well as he could. Johnny came smudgy and hungry, surprised to find that his old friend, big man as he was, seemed to be scarcely so big as when he saw him last, eighteen months ago. For Johnny himself was grown surprisingly, and seemed like to stand as high as Bob's small piece's shoulder by his seventeenth birthday. Bob found more to talk of, now that Johnny had come, and he ate even better than Johnny himself, for nothing sported the keeper's appetite. When could they all come to the forest again for a day? Nan Mei shook her head. She had no days free, but Sundays, she might come someday, perhaps some Sunday in the vague future, but Johnny might get a day off at a slack time, and he and Bessie would come. Bessie dreamed over with delight at the prospect. Every day, since she had left it, the forest had seemed a more wonderful and more distant dream. Every day, some forgotten circumstance, some moment of delight, some long dead bunch of wildflowers, trifles all. And daily common places once had come back to lend one more touch to the fairy picture her memory made ever more radiant as the simple facts fell farther into the past. And Johnny, little burdened with pictures of fancy, for he put his imagination away from him now as a childishness and worthy an engineer. Nevertheless, thought that as soon as a certain large job was completed at Maidment and Hurst's, the gaffer would doubtless let him lose the day. So it was settled, and when Johnny hurried off to his work, Bob Smallpeace took the opportunity to leave too, for he must go and see his sister, he said. He went and saw his sister, and took tea with her, and his sister found him even duller than Nan may had done. For in truth, Bob Smallpeace was in a mire of doubt and hesitation. In a frame of mind, so foreign to his simple habit, he grew fretful and left things to chance and impulse. With no definite design in the world, he wandered back to Harbour Lane after tea, and there met for the first time Uncle Isaac and Mr. Buttson. This company proved incongenial, and indeed the distinguished Buttson was indisposed to be cordial with an Essex pumpkin in a velvety uniform. So though Nan may was all kindness, Bob Smallpeace soon took himself off to the train, where his savage moodiness might not be seen. The whole thing was past hope now, though he might have found it hard to tell precisely what had occurred since midday to worsen the look of affairs.