Chapter Sixteen.Plans for the Future.I went straight back to Mr Revitts, and only when nearly there did I remember that I had not thought to ask about Mr Rowle. But I felt it did not matter now, for I had obtained a situation, and he could not be annoyed to find that I was coming to the same establishment.Mr Revitts was enjoying himself when I reached his room; that is to say, he was sitting in his dingy old red-flannel shirt and his blue uniform trousers, with his sleeves rolled well up above the elbow, reading the police news in a daily paper and smoking a short black pipe, with the wreaths of smoke floating out of the open window.“Here you are then, my lad,” he said, “just in time. You and I will go out and have a bit o’ something at the cookshop. Did you find your friend?”“No, sir—no Mr Revitts,” I said, correcting myself, “I forgot to ask for him.”He let his paper fall in his lap and stared hard at me.“Now, look here, my lad,” he said, expelling a large cloud of smoke, “I don’t want you to commit yourself, and it’s my dooty to tell you that whatever you say will be—No, no, nonsense. Come, speak out. What are you laughing at? What have you been doing?”Hereupon I told him my adventure, my eyes sparkling with delight.“And a whole sovereign into the bargain!” he cried as I finished. “Let’s look at it.”I handed him the bright new golden coin, and he span it up in the air, caught it dexterously, and bit it. Then he tried it three or four times on the table, as a shopman would a piece of money on a counter, and ended by making believe to thrust it into his pocket.“It’s a good one,” he said, “and I think I shall stick to it for your board and lodging last night and this morning. What do you say?”“I think you ought to be paid, sir,” I said eagerly, “for you were very good to me.”He stared hard at me for a few moments, and then thrust the sovereign back in my hand.“I’ve seen a good many boys in my time,” he said, “but I’m blessed if ever I run again one like you. Why, you’ve got plenty of pluck, or else you wouldn’t have run away; but of all the simple—well, I won’t say simple, but green—of the green chaps I ever did come across you are about the greenest.”I flushed up far from that tint at his words, for there was the old complaint again about my greenness.“Please, Mr Revitts, I’m very sorry I’m so green,” I said, looking at him wistfully; “perhaps it’s because I’ve always lived in the country.”He stared harder at me.“Come here,” he said sharply, and going to the window, he placed me between his knees, laid a great hand upon each of my shoulders grasping them firmly, and gazed straight into my eyes. “Look here, youngster,” he said angrily, “is it R or F? Are you trying to humbug me? Because, if so, it won’t do: I’m too old.”“Humbug you, sir?” I said wonderingly. “I don’t know what you mean.”“That you don’t,” he said, dropping his fierce way and sinking back smiling. “’Struth, what a boy you are!”I gazed at him in a troubled way, for I felt hurt.“I’m very sorry, Mr Revitts,” I said, “and I hope you don’t think I would do anything to deceive you,” for that “R or F” puzzled me.“Deceive me? Not you, my boy. Why, you couldn’t deceive a sparrer or a hoyster. Why, you’re as transparent as a pane of glass. I can see right through you and out on the other side.”“I’m afraid I am very stupid, sir,” I said sadly. “I’ll try to learn to be more clever. I don’t know much, only about books, and natural history, and botany, but I’ll try very hard not—not to be so—so—green.”“Why, bless your young heart, where have you been all your life? You’re either as cunning as—No, you ain’t, you really are as innocent as a lamb.”“I’ve always been at home with papa and mamma, sir.”“Sir, be hanged! My name’s William Revitts; and if you and me’s going to be good friends, my boy, you’ll drop that sir-ing and mistering, and call me plain Bill.”“Should you like it, sir, if I did?” I asked anxiously.“No,sir, I shouldn’t. Yes, I should. Now then, is it to be friends or enemies?”“Oh, friends, please,” I said, holding out my hand.“Then there’s mine, young Antony,” he cried seizing it in his great, fingers. “And mind, I’m Bill, or old Bill, whichever you like.”“I’m sure—Bill, I should be glad to be the best of friends,” I said, “for I have none.”“Oh, come now, you said that Polly was very good to you.”“What, Mary? Oh yes!”“Well, then, that’s one. But, I say, you know you mustn’t be so precious innocent.”“Mustn’t I, sir?”“What!” he cried, bringing his hand down crash on the table.“Mustn’t I, Bill?”“That’s better. No: that you mustn’t. I seem to look upon you as quite an old friend since you lived so long with my Polly. But, I say, your education has been horribly neglected. You’re quite a baby to the boys up here at your age.”“But papa was so anxious that I should learn everything,” I said, as I thought of Mr Ruddle’s words, “and we had lessons every day.”“Hah! Yes; but you can’t learn everything out o’ books,” he continued, looking at me curiously. “You never went away to school, then?”“No. I was going in a month or two.”“Hah! and it was put off. Well, we can’t help it now, only you mustn’t be so jolly easy-going. Everybody here will glory in taking you in.”“Do you mean cheating me?”“That’s just what I do mean. Why, some chaps would have nailed that sov like a shot, and you’d never have seen it again. You see, I’m in the police, and we couldn’t stoop to such a thing, but I know lots o’ men as would say as a sov was no use to a boy like you, and think as they ought to take care of it for you.”“Well, wouldn’t that be right, Mr Revitts?” I said.“No, it wouldn’t, young greenhorn,” he cried sharply, “because they’d take care of it their way.”“Greenhorn?” I said eagerly. “Oh, that’s what you mean by my being green! You mean ignorant and unripe in the world’s ways.”“That’s just what I do mean,” he cried, slapping me on the shoulder. “Brayvo! that’s the result of my first lesson,” he continued admiringly. “Why, I’m blessed if I don’t think that if I had you here six months, and took pains, I could make a man of you.”“Oh, I wish you would,” I cried excitedly. “I do so want to be a true, good man—one such as papa used to speak of—one who could carve his way to a noble and honourable career, and grow to be loved and venerated and held in high esteem by the world at large. Oh, I would try so hard—I’d work night and day, and feel at last, that I had not tried in vain.”“He-ar! he-ar! Brayvo, brayvo, youngster! Well done our side! That’s your style!” he cried, clapping his hands and stamping his feet as I stopped short, flushed and excited with the ideas that had come thronging to my brain, and then gazed at him in a shamefaced and bashful manner. “That’s your sort, my boy, I like that. I say, did your father teach you that sorter thing.”“Yes. Mr Rev.—Yes, Bill.”“I say, your par, as you called him, wasn’t a fool.”“My papa,” I said proudly, “I mean my dear father, was the best and kindest of men.”“That I’ll lay sixpence he was. Why, I was feeling quite out of heart about you, and thinking you such a hinnocent young goose that I shouldn’t know how to help you. Why, lookye here, I’ve been kicking about in the world ever since I was ten, and been in the police six years, and I couldn’t make a speech like that.”“Couldn’t you, sir—Mr—I mean Bill?”“No, that I couldn’t. Why, I tell you what. You and I’ll stick together and I don’t know what we mightn’t make of you at last—p’r’aps Lord Mayor o’ London. Or, look here, after a few years we might get you in the police.”“In the police?” I faltered.“To be sure, and you being such a scholard and writing such a hand—I know it, you know. Lookye here,” he continued, pulling out a pocket-book, from one of the wallets in which he drew a note I had written for Mary, “I say, you writing such a hand, and being well up in your spelling, you’d rise like a air balloon, and get to be sergeant, and inspector, and perhaps superintendent, and wear a sword! You mark my words, youngster; you’ve got a future before you.”“Do you think so?”“I just do. I like you, young Antony, hang me if I don’t; and if you stick to me I’ll teach you all I know.”“Will you?” I said eagerly.“Well, all I can. Just hand me that paper o’ tobacco. Thankye. I’ll have just one more pipe, and then we’ll go to dinner.”He filled and lit his pipe, and went on talking.“First and foremost, don’t you get trying to smoke.”“No, I will not,” I said.“That’s right. It’s all very well for men, a little of it; but I don’t like to see boys at it, as too many tries just now. I often sees ’em on my beat, and I never feel so jolly happy as when I come across one looking white after it about the gills, and so sick he can’t hold his head straight up. But, as I was a-saying, you stick to me and I’ll teach you all I can, and I know two or three things,” he continued, closing one eye and opening it again.“You must, sir.”“Yes; there’s some clever chaps I have to deal with sometimes—roughs and thieves and the like; but they have to get up very early in the morning to take me in.”“Do they, sir—Bill?” I said wonderingly.“There, now you’re getting innocent again,” he said sharply. “You don’t mean to tell me as you don’t understand that?”“Oh yes, I do: you mean that they would have to get up very early to master you—say at daybreak.”“What a young innocent you are,” he cried, laughing; and then seeing my pained look, he slapped me on the shoulder again. “It’s all right, my boy. You can’t help it; and you’ll soon learn all these things. I know a lot, but so do you—a sight o’ things I don’t. Why, I’ll be bound to say you could write a long letter without making a single mistake in the spelling.”“Yes, I think I could,” I said innocently. “Both papa and mamma took great pains with me over that.”“Look at that, now!” he said. “Why, I couldn’t write two lines in my pocket-book without putting down something as the sergeant would chaff.”“Chaff?” I said, “cut-up stuff for horses?”“Yes: that’s it,” he said, grinning. “Stuff as they cut up. There, you’ll soon know what chaff is, my lad. But, you know, all the same, and speaking quite fair, I do maintain as spelling ain’t square.”“Not square?”“I mean fair and square and above-board. Them as invented spelling couldn’t have been very clever, or they’d have made everything spelt as it sounded. Why, it only seems natural to spell doctor’s stuff f-i-z-z-i-k, and here you have to stick inp’s, andh’s, andy’s, ands’s, andc’s, as ain’t wanted at all.”“It is puzzling, certainly,” I said.“Puzzling? Puzzling ain’t nothing to it. I can write a fair round hand, and spell fast enough my way. Our sergeant says there isn’t a man on our station as can write such a nice looking report; but when it comes to the spelling—there, I won’t tell you what he said about that!”“But you could soon improve your spelling.”“Think so?” he said eagerly. “Oh no, I don’t fancy we could.”“I am sure you could,” I said. “The best way is to do dictation.”“Dictation? What, ordering about?”“Oh no; not that sort of dictation. I mean for me to read to you from a book and you write it down, and then I mark all the misspelt words, and you write them down and learn them.”“Look at that now!” he exclaimed. “To be sure, that’s the way. Now, you know, I bought a spelling-book, that didn’t seem to do no good; so I bought a pocket dictionary, and that was such a job to go through, so full of breakneck words as no one never heard of before, that I give that up. Why, you ain’t innocent after all. Would you mind trying me?”“Mind! no,” I cried; “we could use either a slate or paper.”“So we could, and do it with either a pencil or a pen. I say, come: fair and square, I’ll teach you all I know if you’ll teach me all you know.”“That’s agreed,” I said.“Done for you,” he cried, shaking hands. “And now my pipe’s out, and we’ll go and have dinner. Wait till I roll down my sleeves and get on my stock. Why, you and I will be as jolly as can be here. It’s rather a long way to go to your work, but you must get up a bit earlier. Two miles night and morning won’t kill you; and I’ve been thinking what we’ll do. You’ve got your sovereign. We’ll go to a place I know, and buy one o’ them little iron fold-up bedsteads and a mattress and pillow and blanket, and stand it there. It’s breaking into your sov, but then you’ll have the bit o’ furniture, which will be your property, so the money won’t be wasted. What do you say?”I was delighted, and said so.“Well, then, lookye here,” he continued, as he took great pains with his hair and whiskers before the glass, and then put on and buttoned up his uniform coat, to stand before me a frank, manly fellow of about thirty, “you’re my company this week, and after that you shall put so much of your salary into the stock to pay for living, and we shall both be free and independent, and what’s left you can shove in the bank.”“In the bank?”“Yes, savings-bank. I don’t mind telling you as an old friend I’ve got forty-four pun ten there.”“Mary has thirty-seven pounds in a savings-bank,” I said.“Now there’s for you!” he said.“Yes, she told me so; but perhaps I oughtn’t to have told you.”“Well,” he said seriously, “I s’pose you oughtn’t, because it was told you in confidence, but I’m glad you did. She never told me.”“Did you ever tell her how much you had saved?”“No, that I didn’t, only as I was saving, so it’s all fair. Look here, youngster—I mean Antony,” he said, after standing staring in the glass for a few minutes, “I tell you what it is, you coming up has about brought matters to a head.”“Has it, Bill?”“Yes, it hayve, my boy. Do you know, I don’t for the life of me know why we two have been waiting; do you?”“No,” I said shaking my head.“No, nor more don’t Mary, I’ll bet a sixpence. We got engaged to one another, and then we said as it wouldn’t be sensible, to get married at once, as we might both see some one we liked better, don’t you see?”“Yes,” I said, feeling puzzled all the same, “it was very prudent.”“I could have got married lots o’ times since, but I’ve never seen a girl as I liked so well, and I s’pose Mary hasn’t seen a chap, for she keeps on writing.”“Oh yes; and she thinks a deal of you. She’s very proud of you.”“Is she, though?” he said, with a satisfied smile, and giving his head a shake in his stock. “Well, then, I tell you what: I’ll write and ask Mary to say the day, and then meet her at the station. We’ll take a little bigger place, and she’ll come up and make us both comfortable. What do you say to that?”I clapped my hands, and he stood smiling in an exceedingly simple way, and looking like a very big overgrown boy, for a few moments, before turning himself round to me.“See that,” he said, in a quiet business-like way. “I was laughing at you for being soft and green just now, and I’m blessed if I don’t feel as if I was ten times worse. Come along, company, it’s ever so late, and my report says hot mutton chop, a cup of tea, and some bread and butter.”That evening, after a hearty meal, for which Revitts insisted upon paying, there was just time to make the purchases he proposed, which almost melted the whole of my sovereign, and then it was time for him to go on duty.“They’ve cost a deal,” he said thoughtfully, “but then you’ve still got the money, only in another shape. Now, you get back home and take in the things when they come, and then sit and read a bit, and afterwards go to bed. I wouldn’t go out, if I was you.”We parted, and I followed out his directions, being shrewd enough to see that he thought me hardly fit to be trusted alone.The next morning I woke to find it was half-past six, and that Revitts had come home and was preparing for bed. He looked tired out, and was very black and dirty, having been, he said, at a fire; but he was not too much fatigued to give me a friendly bit or two of advice as to getting my breakfast and going down to the office.“Have a good breakfast before you start, my boy, and get some bread and cheese for your lunch—that’s twopence. When you come back you’ll find the tea-things out, and you can make dinner and tea too.”In good time I started, leaving Revitts sleeping off his night’s fatigue, and about ten minutes to ten I was at the door of the great printing-office, flushed with exercise and dread, but eager all the same to make a beginning.I hesitated as to whether I should go in at once or wait till it struck ten, but I thought that perhaps I might be some time before I saw Mr Ruddle, so I walked straight in, and the man reading the paper in his gloss case looked up at me in a very ill-used way as I stopped at his window.“You again?” he said gruffly. “Well, what is it?”“If you please, I’ve come to work,” I said.“Work? Why, it’s ten o’clock. Why weren’t you here at eight?”“Mr Ruddle said ten o’clock, sir, and I want to see him.”“Oh!” he said gruffly, as if he were the gatekeeper of an earthly paradise. “Well, I s’pose you must pass in. Go on.”I went on into the passage, feeling as if the doorkeeper was the most important personage there, and as if the proprietors must make a practice of asking permission to go into their own place.I went, then, nervously down the passage till I came to the door of the room where I had seen Messrs Ruddle and Lister. It was ajar, and there were loud voices talking, and though I knocked they went on.“Stern firmness is one thing, Grimstone,” I heard Mr Ruddle saying, “and bullying another.”“But you don’t consider, sir, that I bully the men, do you?” said another voice which was quite familiar to me.“You may call it what you like, Grimstone. There, I’m busy now.”There was a sharp step, and the door was flung wide open and closed, when my friend the overseer, who had been so rough to me on the previous day, came out and pretty nearly knocked me down.
I went straight back to Mr Revitts, and only when nearly there did I remember that I had not thought to ask about Mr Rowle. But I felt it did not matter now, for I had obtained a situation, and he could not be annoyed to find that I was coming to the same establishment.
Mr Revitts was enjoying himself when I reached his room; that is to say, he was sitting in his dingy old red-flannel shirt and his blue uniform trousers, with his sleeves rolled well up above the elbow, reading the police news in a daily paper and smoking a short black pipe, with the wreaths of smoke floating out of the open window.
“Here you are then, my lad,” he said, “just in time. You and I will go out and have a bit o’ something at the cookshop. Did you find your friend?”
“No, sir—no Mr Revitts,” I said, correcting myself, “I forgot to ask for him.”
He let his paper fall in his lap and stared hard at me.
“Now, look here, my lad,” he said, expelling a large cloud of smoke, “I don’t want you to commit yourself, and it’s my dooty to tell you that whatever you say will be—No, no, nonsense. Come, speak out. What are you laughing at? What have you been doing?”
Hereupon I told him my adventure, my eyes sparkling with delight.
“And a whole sovereign into the bargain!” he cried as I finished. “Let’s look at it.”
I handed him the bright new golden coin, and he span it up in the air, caught it dexterously, and bit it. Then he tried it three or four times on the table, as a shopman would a piece of money on a counter, and ended by making believe to thrust it into his pocket.
“It’s a good one,” he said, “and I think I shall stick to it for your board and lodging last night and this morning. What do you say?”
“I think you ought to be paid, sir,” I said eagerly, “for you were very good to me.”
He stared hard at me for a few moments, and then thrust the sovereign back in my hand.
“I’ve seen a good many boys in my time,” he said, “but I’m blessed if ever I run again one like you. Why, you’ve got plenty of pluck, or else you wouldn’t have run away; but of all the simple—well, I won’t say simple, but green—of the green chaps I ever did come across you are about the greenest.”
I flushed up far from that tint at his words, for there was the old complaint again about my greenness.
“Please, Mr Revitts, I’m very sorry I’m so green,” I said, looking at him wistfully; “perhaps it’s because I’ve always lived in the country.”
He stared harder at me.
“Come here,” he said sharply, and going to the window, he placed me between his knees, laid a great hand upon each of my shoulders grasping them firmly, and gazed straight into my eyes. “Look here, youngster,” he said angrily, “is it R or F? Are you trying to humbug me? Because, if so, it won’t do: I’m too old.”
“Humbug you, sir?” I said wonderingly. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“That you don’t,” he said, dropping his fierce way and sinking back smiling. “’Struth, what a boy you are!”
I gazed at him in a troubled way, for I felt hurt.
“I’m very sorry, Mr Revitts,” I said, “and I hope you don’t think I would do anything to deceive you,” for that “R or F” puzzled me.
“Deceive me? Not you, my boy. Why, you couldn’t deceive a sparrer or a hoyster. Why, you’re as transparent as a pane of glass. I can see right through you and out on the other side.”
“I’m afraid I am very stupid, sir,” I said sadly. “I’ll try to learn to be more clever. I don’t know much, only about books, and natural history, and botany, but I’ll try very hard not—not to be so—so—green.”
“Why, bless your young heart, where have you been all your life? You’re either as cunning as—No, you ain’t, you really are as innocent as a lamb.”
“I’ve always been at home with papa and mamma, sir.”
“Sir, be hanged! My name’s William Revitts; and if you and me’s going to be good friends, my boy, you’ll drop that sir-ing and mistering, and call me plain Bill.”
“Should you like it, sir, if I did?” I asked anxiously.
“No,sir, I shouldn’t. Yes, I should. Now then, is it to be friends or enemies?”
“Oh, friends, please,” I said, holding out my hand.
“Then there’s mine, young Antony,” he cried seizing it in his great, fingers. “And mind, I’m Bill, or old Bill, whichever you like.”
“I’m sure—Bill, I should be glad to be the best of friends,” I said, “for I have none.”
“Oh, come now, you said that Polly was very good to you.”
“What, Mary? Oh yes!”
“Well, then, that’s one. But, I say, you know you mustn’t be so precious innocent.”
“Mustn’t I, sir?”
“What!” he cried, bringing his hand down crash on the table.
“Mustn’t I, Bill?”
“That’s better. No: that you mustn’t. I seem to look upon you as quite an old friend since you lived so long with my Polly. But, I say, your education has been horribly neglected. You’re quite a baby to the boys up here at your age.”
“But papa was so anxious that I should learn everything,” I said, as I thought of Mr Ruddle’s words, “and we had lessons every day.”
“Hah! Yes; but you can’t learn everything out o’ books,” he continued, looking at me curiously. “You never went away to school, then?”
“No. I was going in a month or two.”
“Hah! and it was put off. Well, we can’t help it now, only you mustn’t be so jolly easy-going. Everybody here will glory in taking you in.”
“Do you mean cheating me?”
“That’s just what I do mean. Why, some chaps would have nailed that sov like a shot, and you’d never have seen it again. You see, I’m in the police, and we couldn’t stoop to such a thing, but I know lots o’ men as would say as a sov was no use to a boy like you, and think as they ought to take care of it for you.”
“Well, wouldn’t that be right, Mr Revitts?” I said.
“No, it wouldn’t, young greenhorn,” he cried sharply, “because they’d take care of it their way.”
“Greenhorn?” I said eagerly. “Oh, that’s what you mean by my being green! You mean ignorant and unripe in the world’s ways.”
“That’s just what I do mean,” he cried, slapping me on the shoulder. “Brayvo! that’s the result of my first lesson,” he continued admiringly. “Why, I’m blessed if I don’t think that if I had you here six months, and took pains, I could make a man of you.”
“Oh, I wish you would,” I cried excitedly. “I do so want to be a true, good man—one such as papa used to speak of—one who could carve his way to a noble and honourable career, and grow to be loved and venerated and held in high esteem by the world at large. Oh, I would try so hard—I’d work night and day, and feel at last, that I had not tried in vain.”
“He-ar! he-ar! Brayvo, brayvo, youngster! Well done our side! That’s your style!” he cried, clapping his hands and stamping his feet as I stopped short, flushed and excited with the ideas that had come thronging to my brain, and then gazed at him in a shamefaced and bashful manner. “That’s your sort, my boy, I like that. I say, did your father teach you that sorter thing.”
“Yes. Mr Rev.—Yes, Bill.”
“I say, your par, as you called him, wasn’t a fool.”
“My papa,” I said proudly, “I mean my dear father, was the best and kindest of men.”
“That I’ll lay sixpence he was. Why, I was feeling quite out of heart about you, and thinking you such a hinnocent young goose that I shouldn’t know how to help you. Why, lookye here, I’ve been kicking about in the world ever since I was ten, and been in the police six years, and I couldn’t make a speech like that.”
“Couldn’t you, sir—Mr—I mean Bill?”
“No, that I couldn’t. Why, I tell you what. You and I’ll stick together and I don’t know what we mightn’t make of you at last—p’r’aps Lord Mayor o’ London. Or, look here, after a few years we might get you in the police.”
“In the police?” I faltered.
“To be sure, and you being such a scholard and writing such a hand—I know it, you know. Lookye here,” he continued, pulling out a pocket-book, from one of the wallets in which he drew a note I had written for Mary, “I say, you writing such a hand, and being well up in your spelling, you’d rise like a air balloon, and get to be sergeant, and inspector, and perhaps superintendent, and wear a sword! You mark my words, youngster; you’ve got a future before you.”
“Do you think so?”
“I just do. I like you, young Antony, hang me if I don’t; and if you stick to me I’ll teach you all I know.”
“Will you?” I said eagerly.
“Well, all I can. Just hand me that paper o’ tobacco. Thankye. I’ll have just one more pipe, and then we’ll go to dinner.”
He filled and lit his pipe, and went on talking.
“First and foremost, don’t you get trying to smoke.”
“No, I will not,” I said.
“That’s right. It’s all very well for men, a little of it; but I don’t like to see boys at it, as too many tries just now. I often sees ’em on my beat, and I never feel so jolly happy as when I come across one looking white after it about the gills, and so sick he can’t hold his head straight up. But, as I was a-saying, you stick to me and I’ll teach you all I can, and I know two or three things,” he continued, closing one eye and opening it again.
“You must, sir.”
“Yes; there’s some clever chaps I have to deal with sometimes—roughs and thieves and the like; but they have to get up very early in the morning to take me in.”
“Do they, sir—Bill?” I said wonderingly.
“There, now you’re getting innocent again,” he said sharply. “You don’t mean to tell me as you don’t understand that?”
“Oh yes, I do: you mean that they would have to get up very early to master you—say at daybreak.”
“What a young innocent you are,” he cried, laughing; and then seeing my pained look, he slapped me on the shoulder again. “It’s all right, my boy. You can’t help it; and you’ll soon learn all these things. I know a lot, but so do you—a sight o’ things I don’t. Why, I’ll be bound to say you could write a long letter without making a single mistake in the spelling.”
“Yes, I think I could,” I said innocently. “Both papa and mamma took great pains with me over that.”
“Look at that, now!” he said. “Why, I couldn’t write two lines in my pocket-book without putting down something as the sergeant would chaff.”
“Chaff?” I said, “cut-up stuff for horses?”
“Yes: that’s it,” he said, grinning. “Stuff as they cut up. There, you’ll soon know what chaff is, my lad. But, you know, all the same, and speaking quite fair, I do maintain as spelling ain’t square.”
“Not square?”
“I mean fair and square and above-board. Them as invented spelling couldn’t have been very clever, or they’d have made everything spelt as it sounded. Why, it only seems natural to spell doctor’s stuff f-i-z-z-i-k, and here you have to stick inp’s, andh’s, andy’s, ands’s, andc’s, as ain’t wanted at all.”
“It is puzzling, certainly,” I said.
“Puzzling? Puzzling ain’t nothing to it. I can write a fair round hand, and spell fast enough my way. Our sergeant says there isn’t a man on our station as can write such a nice looking report; but when it comes to the spelling—there, I won’t tell you what he said about that!”
“But you could soon improve your spelling.”
“Think so?” he said eagerly. “Oh no, I don’t fancy we could.”
“I am sure you could,” I said. “The best way is to do dictation.”
“Dictation? What, ordering about?”
“Oh no; not that sort of dictation. I mean for me to read to you from a book and you write it down, and then I mark all the misspelt words, and you write them down and learn them.”
“Look at that now!” he exclaimed. “To be sure, that’s the way. Now, you know, I bought a spelling-book, that didn’t seem to do no good; so I bought a pocket dictionary, and that was such a job to go through, so full of breakneck words as no one never heard of before, that I give that up. Why, you ain’t innocent after all. Would you mind trying me?”
“Mind! no,” I cried; “we could use either a slate or paper.”
“So we could, and do it with either a pencil or a pen. I say, come: fair and square, I’ll teach you all I know if you’ll teach me all you know.”
“That’s agreed,” I said.
“Done for you,” he cried, shaking hands. “And now my pipe’s out, and we’ll go and have dinner. Wait till I roll down my sleeves and get on my stock. Why, you and I will be as jolly as can be here. It’s rather a long way to go to your work, but you must get up a bit earlier. Two miles night and morning won’t kill you; and I’ve been thinking what we’ll do. You’ve got your sovereign. We’ll go to a place I know, and buy one o’ them little iron fold-up bedsteads and a mattress and pillow and blanket, and stand it there. It’s breaking into your sov, but then you’ll have the bit o’ furniture, which will be your property, so the money won’t be wasted. What do you say?”
I was delighted, and said so.
“Well, then, lookye here,” he continued, as he took great pains with his hair and whiskers before the glass, and then put on and buttoned up his uniform coat, to stand before me a frank, manly fellow of about thirty, “you’re my company this week, and after that you shall put so much of your salary into the stock to pay for living, and we shall both be free and independent, and what’s left you can shove in the bank.”
“In the bank?”
“Yes, savings-bank. I don’t mind telling you as an old friend I’ve got forty-four pun ten there.”
“Mary has thirty-seven pounds in a savings-bank,” I said.
“Now there’s for you!” he said.
“Yes, she told me so; but perhaps I oughtn’t to have told you.”
“Well,” he said seriously, “I s’pose you oughtn’t, because it was told you in confidence, but I’m glad you did. She never told me.”
“Did you ever tell her how much you had saved?”
“No, that I didn’t, only as I was saving, so it’s all fair. Look here, youngster—I mean Antony,” he said, after standing staring in the glass for a few minutes, “I tell you what it is, you coming up has about brought matters to a head.”
“Has it, Bill?”
“Yes, it hayve, my boy. Do you know, I don’t for the life of me know why we two have been waiting; do you?”
“No,” I said shaking my head.
“No, nor more don’t Mary, I’ll bet a sixpence. We got engaged to one another, and then we said as it wouldn’t be sensible, to get married at once, as we might both see some one we liked better, don’t you see?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling puzzled all the same, “it was very prudent.”
“I could have got married lots o’ times since, but I’ve never seen a girl as I liked so well, and I s’pose Mary hasn’t seen a chap, for she keeps on writing.”
“Oh yes; and she thinks a deal of you. She’s very proud of you.”
“Is she, though?” he said, with a satisfied smile, and giving his head a shake in his stock. “Well, then, I tell you what: I’ll write and ask Mary to say the day, and then meet her at the station. We’ll take a little bigger place, and she’ll come up and make us both comfortable. What do you say to that?”
I clapped my hands, and he stood smiling in an exceedingly simple way, and looking like a very big overgrown boy, for a few moments, before turning himself round to me.
“See that,” he said, in a quiet business-like way. “I was laughing at you for being soft and green just now, and I’m blessed if I don’t feel as if I was ten times worse. Come along, company, it’s ever so late, and my report says hot mutton chop, a cup of tea, and some bread and butter.”
That evening, after a hearty meal, for which Revitts insisted upon paying, there was just time to make the purchases he proposed, which almost melted the whole of my sovereign, and then it was time for him to go on duty.
“They’ve cost a deal,” he said thoughtfully, “but then you’ve still got the money, only in another shape. Now, you get back home and take in the things when they come, and then sit and read a bit, and afterwards go to bed. I wouldn’t go out, if I was you.”
We parted, and I followed out his directions, being shrewd enough to see that he thought me hardly fit to be trusted alone.
The next morning I woke to find it was half-past six, and that Revitts had come home and was preparing for bed. He looked tired out, and was very black and dirty, having been, he said, at a fire; but he was not too much fatigued to give me a friendly bit or two of advice as to getting my breakfast and going down to the office.
“Have a good breakfast before you start, my boy, and get some bread and cheese for your lunch—that’s twopence. When you come back you’ll find the tea-things out, and you can make dinner and tea too.”
In good time I started, leaving Revitts sleeping off his night’s fatigue, and about ten minutes to ten I was at the door of the great printing-office, flushed with exercise and dread, but eager all the same to make a beginning.
I hesitated as to whether I should go in at once or wait till it struck ten, but I thought that perhaps I might be some time before I saw Mr Ruddle, so I walked straight in, and the man reading the paper in his gloss case looked up at me in a very ill-used way as I stopped at his window.
“You again?” he said gruffly. “Well, what is it?”
“If you please, I’ve come to work,” I said.
“Work? Why, it’s ten o’clock. Why weren’t you here at eight?”
“Mr Ruddle said ten o’clock, sir, and I want to see him.”
“Oh!” he said gruffly, as if he were the gatekeeper of an earthly paradise. “Well, I s’pose you must pass in. Go on.”
I went on into the passage, feeling as if the doorkeeper was the most important personage there, and as if the proprietors must make a practice of asking permission to go into their own place.
I went, then, nervously down the passage till I came to the door of the room where I had seen Messrs Ruddle and Lister. It was ajar, and there were loud voices talking, and though I knocked they went on.
“Stern firmness is one thing, Grimstone,” I heard Mr Ruddle saying, “and bullying another.”
“But you don’t consider, sir, that I bully the men, do you?” said another voice which was quite familiar to me.
“You may call it what you like, Grimstone. There, I’m busy now.”
There was a sharp step, and the door was flung wide open and closed, when my friend the overseer, who had been so rough to me on the previous day, came out and pretty nearly knocked me down.
Chapter Seventeen.My First Literary Efforts. I Make Another Friend.The overseer and I stood in the dim light gazing at one another for a few moments, during which I seemed to read in his sharp, harsh face an air of resentment at my presence.“Hallo!” he said, in an angry voice, and evidently rejoicing at having encountered some one upon whom he could vent a little of the anger seething within him. “What, are you here again, you young vagabond? Didn’t I tell you yesterday to go about your business? Be off with you, or I’ll send for a policeman. How dare you! What do you mean?”“But please, sir,” I remonstrated.“Will you be off?” he roared; and I felt that I was about to be driven from the place, when the proprietor’s door was sharply opened and Mr Lister appeared.“Confound it all, Grimstone,” he cried, “what’s the matter now? Look here, sir; I will not have this bullying and noise in the place.”“Your father never spoke to me like that, Mr John, when he was alive.”“My father put up with a great deal from you, Grimstone, because you were an old and faithful servant of the firm; but that is no reason why I, his son, should submit to what is sometimes bordering on insolence.”“Insolence, Mr John?”“Yes, Grimstone, insolence.”“Whatisthe matter?” said Mr Ruddle, coming out.“Mr John says I’m insolent, Mr Ruddle,” said the overseer angrily; “was I ever insolent to you, sir, or his father?”“Well, if you want the truth, Grimstone, you often were very insolent, only we put up with it for old acquaintance’ sake. But what’s the matter now?”“I was just speaking to this young vagabond, who persists in hanging about the place, sir, when Mr John came out and attacked me, sir.”“Don’t call names, Grimstone,” said Mr Lister hotly. “This young vagabond, as you call him, is a fresh boy whom Mr Ruddle has taken on, and whom I desire you to treat kindly.”“Why didn’t he speak, then,” said the overseer angrily; “how was I to know that he was engaged? In Mr Lister senior’s time the engaging of boys for the office was left to the overseer.”He stalked off, evidently in high dudgeon, leaving the masters gazing at one another.“He grows insufferable,” said Mr Lister angrily. “One would think the place belonged to him.”“Yes, he is rough,” said Mr Ruddle; “but he’s a good overseer, John, and a faithful old servant. He was with us when we first began. Well, my boy, you’ve come then; now go upstairs to the composing-room, and ask Mr Grimstone to give you a job; he’ll be a bit cross, I dare say, but you must not mind that.”“No; sir; I’ll try not.”“That’s right,” he said, giving me a friendly nod, and I hurried upstairs and walked right through the composing-room to Mr Grimstone’s glass case.He saw me coming, but, though I tapped softly at the door several times, he refused to take any notice of me for some minutes, during which I had to stand uncomfortably aware of the fact that I had given terrible offence to this man in authority, by allowing myself to be engaged downstairs after he had bade me go.He was busy, pen in hand, looking over some long, narrow pieces of paper, and kept on turning them over and over, making his spectacles flash as he changed his position, and directing the top of his very shiny bald head at me, till at last he raised it, gave a start, and turned as if astonished at seeing me there; but it was poor pantomime and badly done.“Well, what is it?” he said.“If you please, sir, Mr Lister sent me up to ask you to give me a job.”“Me give you a job,” he said, in a menacing tone; “why, I thought you would be hanger-on down below, and not come up into the office, where you’d get your nice white hands dirtied. What job can I give you? What can you do? What do you know? Here, Smith, take this boy, and give him a page of pie to dis.”The big, fat-headed boy came up from a distant part of the room, scowled at me, and led me to one of the desk-like frames, upon which were four large open trays full of compartments of various sizes.“Here you are!” he said, “lay holt;” and he thrust a little heavy square paper packet into my hands. “It’s burjoyce,”—so it sounded to me; “look alive, and then come for another.”He went away, leaving me balancing the heavy packet in my hand. It was about the size and thickness of a small book, but what next to do with it, or how I was to do it, I, did not know.Of course I know now that it was the petty, contemptible revenge of a little-minded man to set me, a totally uninstructed novice, to do that which an old practised compositor will shelve if he can, as an uncongenial task. To “dis a page of burjoyce pie” was, in fact, to distribute—that is, place in its proper compartments, or in the case—every large and small letter, space and point, of a quantity ofbourgeois, or ordinary newspaper type, that had been accidentally mixed, or “pied” as it is technically termed. The distribution of an ordinary page or column of type is comparatively easy, for the skilled workman reads it off word by word, and drops the letters dexterously in the compartment assigned; but in “pie” the letters and spaces are all jumbled, and the task is troublesome and slow.There was I, then, with about as easy a task as if I had been suddenly handed the various parts of a watch, and told to put them together; and I felt helpless and ashamed, not daring to interrupt any of the busy men intent upon their work at the various frames.An hour must have elapsed before I felt that I dare venture to go towards Mr Grimstone’s glass case, and I was about desperately to tell him that I was ignorant and helpless, and quite unfit to do what he had set me, when the dark, stern-eyed man I had seen on the previous day came round by where I stood.He gazed at me curiously, and gave me a nod, and was passing on, when I desperately exclaimed:“If you please, sir—”“Eh? What, is it, my boy?” he said.“I was told, sir, to dis this pie,” I said, fearful that I was making some absurd blunder about the wordpie.“Well, why don’t you do it? Get the sponge off the stone and give it a good soaking in a galley.”“I’m very sorry, sir,” I said, encouraged by his quiet, kind way, “but I don’t know how.”“Haven’t you been in a printing-office before?”“No, sir.”“And never distributed type?”“No, sir.”“How absurd! Who set you to do it?”“Mr Grimstone, sir.”“But does he know that you have never handled type?”“Yes, sir.”“Ass?” he muttered. “Here, come along with me, my man. No; better not, perhaps. Leave that packet alone, my boy. There, lay it down. Stand here and try and learn the case.”“Learn the case, sir?” I said, with my heart sinking within me at being given another impossible task.“Yes, it’s very easy; only wants time,” he said kindly; “Here, pick up one of these pieces of type,” he continued, dexterously taking up a little thin bit of black metal, “like this, and turn it in your fingers, and see what letter is stamped on the end, and then put it back in the same compartment of the case.”“Is that tray the case, sir?”“Yes, quite right, go on. You can come and ask me anything you don’t know.”I darted a grateful look at him, and eagerly began my task, though in fear and trembling, lest Mr Grimstone should come and find fault because I had not “dis’d the pie.”Few people, I think, realise the sufferings of a sensitive boy at school, or at his first launching into life, when set to some task beyond his perception or powers. The dread of being considered stupid; the fear of the task-masters, the strangeness, the uncongenial surroundings, all combine to make up a state of mental torture that produces illness; and yet it is often ridiculed, and the sufferer treated with cruelty for non-performance of that which, simple to the initiated, is to him in his ignorance an utter impossibility.It was with a sense of relief I cannot describe that I began to lift the metal types one by one, looked at them, and put them back; and I was not long in finding out that, while the capital letters in the upper of the two trays before me ran nearly regularly A, B, C, D, and so on, and beneath them the figures 1, 2, 3, 4, etc, the lower case was a perfect puzzle.The compartments were not like those above, all small squares, and the same size, but some were very large, and some very small; some were long, and some were square; but I found that they were made upon a regular plan. For instance, there was one very large compartment nearly in the middle at the top of the lower tray, that was evidently six times as big as the small compartments; while below and beside it were many more that were four times as big as the small ones; others being only twice as big.I naturally examined the large compartment first, and found it full of little thin slips of metal nearly an inch long, at the end of each of which, and beautifully formed, was the lettere. There was no doubt about it, and it was evident that there were moree’sthan anything else. Then under it I found the compartment full ofh’s, and away to the left,n’sandm’s;t’s,d’s,u’s,o’s,a’s, andr’swere in other large compartments, and it gradually dawned upon my mind that these letters were placed where they would be handiest for use, and that there was the largest number of those that would be most frequently required.My surmise was quite right, and with this idea as the key, I soon found out that little-usedxandzwere in very small numbers, in the most out-of-the-way parts of the tray, just as were the double lettersaeandoe, etc. One compartment close under my hand, and very full, puzzled me the most, for the pieces of metal therein were short, and had no letters on the end; and at last, after trying in vain to understand their meaning, I determined to ask the dark man next time he passed, and went on trying to master my task with the strange clicking noise made by the men going on all round.I hardly dared glance about, but in the casual glimpses I stole, I began to understand now that the men about me were picking up, letter by letter, the types, to form words, and arranging them in little curiously shaped tools they held in their hands.I had been busily learning my letters for about half an hour, when the big, fat-headed boy came up to me.“Now then!” he said, in a bullying tone that was a very good imitation of the overseer’s, “done that page?”“No!” I said.“You ain’t?”“No; I did not know how.”“Oh, you’ll catch it, just, when Mr Grimstone knows. You ain’t coming here to do just as you like; and I tell you what it is—”“Well, what is it, boy?” said a quiet, stern voice, and my heart, gave a joyful thump as I saw the dark man come up.“Please, he ain’t dis’d this here pie.”“No; he did not know how. I set him to learn the case.”“But Mr Grimstone said he was to—”“Jem Smith, do you know you are a fool?” said the dark man quietly.“I dessay I am, Mr Hallett, but Mr Grimstone said as this boy was to—”“And if you don’t go about your business I shall box your ears.”“No, you—”He did not finish his sentence, for there was something in the deep-set dark eyes which had such an effect upon him that he sneaked off, and I turned to my protector.“Would you please tell me why these little things have no letters on their ends, sir?” I said.“Because they are spaces, my boy. Don’t you remember in reading a book there is a little distance between every word?”“Yes, sir,” I said eagerly; “and after a full stop there’s a bigger space.”“To be sure!” he said, smiling, and his pale face looked less stern and severe. “Look: these little things, as you call them, but as we call them, thick spaces, go between every word, and these square ones after a full stop. How are you getting on?”“I know that’se, sir.”“Yes; go on.”“And that’sh, and thato, andu—m—a—r—i—s—o—n—t,” I said, touching the boxes in turn.“Good, very good,” he said, “and what is that?”“That, sir?—d.”“No, it isp. And that?”“Oh, that isb.”“No, it isq. Now you know the meaning of mind yourp’sandq’s. You must learn the difference, and try to recollect this; all the letters, you see, are reversed, like a seal.”“Like the motto on papa’s seal. Yes, I see, sir,” I said eagerly.“That’s right, my boy,” he said looking at me curiously. “Go on, I am too busy to stay.”“Now! what’s all this?” said Mr Grimstone, bustling up with Jem Smith.“Please, sir,” said the latter, “I telled him as he was to—”“I found the boy unable to do what was set him, Mr Grimstone,” said my protector quietly, “and told him to go on with learning his case. The boy has never been in an office before.”“That was for me to know, Mr Hallett,” cried the overseer, growing red in the face. “What the devil do you mean by—”“Interfering, Mr Grimstone? I did it because I was sure you were too good a manager to wish time to be wasted in this large office. And—I must ask you, please when you speak to me, to omit these coarse expressions.”“Of all the insolence—”“Insolent or not, sir,” said the dark man sternly, “have the goodness to remember that I always treat you with respect, and I expect the same from you. Excuse me, but a quarrel between us will not improve your position with the men.”Mr Grimstone looked at him furiously; and turning redder in the face than ever, seemed about to burst into a tirade of angry language, but my protector met his look in a way that quelled him, and turning upon the fat-headed boy, who was looking on open-mouthed, the overseer gave him a sounding box on the ear.“What are you standing gaping there for, you lazy young scoundrel?” he roared; “go and wash those galleys, and do them well.”Then, striding off, he went into his glass case, while Jem Smith, in a compartment at the end of an avenue of cases, began to brush some long lengths of type, and whenever I glanced at him, he shook his fist, as he showed his inflamed eyes red with crying and his face blackened by contact with his dirty hands.My protector, Mr Hallett, had left me at once, and I saw no more of him for some time, as I worked away, sorry at having been the innocent means of getting him into a quarrel. At last, just as I was very intent in puzzling out the difference betweenp’sandq’sI started, for the great lubberly boy came up close behind me.“I’ll give you a warming when you goes out to dinner, see if I don’t,” he whispered; but he shuffled off directly, as Mr Hallett came towards me, saw that I was busy, and after giving me a friendly nod, went back, leaving his calm, strangely stern face so impressed upon me, that I kept finding myself thinking of him, his eyes seeming to stare at me from out of every box.But still I worked on, feeling each moment more and more sure of my way, and at last in a fit of enterprise I set to work and managed to find the letters forming my own name, and laid them side by side.I felt no little nervous dread as dinner-time approached, for Jem Smith’s warming was in waiting; but as one o’clock struck, Mr Hallett came up to me while the other men were hurrying off, and said kindly:“Did that boy threaten you?”“He—he said something, sir,” I replied, hesitating.“I thought so. He’s gone now, so don’t go out to dinner, my man. I can give you a little of mine. I’ll speak to him before you go to-night.”
The overseer and I stood in the dim light gazing at one another for a few moments, during which I seemed to read in his sharp, harsh face an air of resentment at my presence.
“Hallo!” he said, in an angry voice, and evidently rejoicing at having encountered some one upon whom he could vent a little of the anger seething within him. “What, are you here again, you young vagabond? Didn’t I tell you yesterday to go about your business? Be off with you, or I’ll send for a policeman. How dare you! What do you mean?”
“But please, sir,” I remonstrated.
“Will you be off?” he roared; and I felt that I was about to be driven from the place, when the proprietor’s door was sharply opened and Mr Lister appeared.
“Confound it all, Grimstone,” he cried, “what’s the matter now? Look here, sir; I will not have this bullying and noise in the place.”
“Your father never spoke to me like that, Mr John, when he was alive.”
“My father put up with a great deal from you, Grimstone, because you were an old and faithful servant of the firm; but that is no reason why I, his son, should submit to what is sometimes bordering on insolence.”
“Insolence, Mr John?”
“Yes, Grimstone, insolence.”
“Whatisthe matter?” said Mr Ruddle, coming out.
“Mr John says I’m insolent, Mr Ruddle,” said the overseer angrily; “was I ever insolent to you, sir, or his father?”
“Well, if you want the truth, Grimstone, you often were very insolent, only we put up with it for old acquaintance’ sake. But what’s the matter now?”
“I was just speaking to this young vagabond, who persists in hanging about the place, sir, when Mr John came out and attacked me, sir.”
“Don’t call names, Grimstone,” said Mr Lister hotly. “This young vagabond, as you call him, is a fresh boy whom Mr Ruddle has taken on, and whom I desire you to treat kindly.”
“Why didn’t he speak, then,” said the overseer angrily; “how was I to know that he was engaged? In Mr Lister senior’s time the engaging of boys for the office was left to the overseer.”
He stalked off, evidently in high dudgeon, leaving the masters gazing at one another.
“He grows insufferable,” said Mr Lister angrily. “One would think the place belonged to him.”
“Yes, he is rough,” said Mr Ruddle; “but he’s a good overseer, John, and a faithful old servant. He was with us when we first began. Well, my boy, you’ve come then; now go upstairs to the composing-room, and ask Mr Grimstone to give you a job; he’ll be a bit cross, I dare say, but you must not mind that.”
“No; sir; I’ll try not.”
“That’s right,” he said, giving me a friendly nod, and I hurried upstairs and walked right through the composing-room to Mr Grimstone’s glass case.
He saw me coming, but, though I tapped softly at the door several times, he refused to take any notice of me for some minutes, during which I had to stand uncomfortably aware of the fact that I had given terrible offence to this man in authority, by allowing myself to be engaged downstairs after he had bade me go.
He was busy, pen in hand, looking over some long, narrow pieces of paper, and kept on turning them over and over, making his spectacles flash as he changed his position, and directing the top of his very shiny bald head at me, till at last he raised it, gave a start, and turned as if astonished at seeing me there; but it was poor pantomime and badly done.
“Well, what is it?” he said.
“If you please, sir, Mr Lister sent me up to ask you to give me a job.”
“Me give you a job,” he said, in a menacing tone; “why, I thought you would be hanger-on down below, and not come up into the office, where you’d get your nice white hands dirtied. What job can I give you? What can you do? What do you know? Here, Smith, take this boy, and give him a page of pie to dis.”
The big, fat-headed boy came up from a distant part of the room, scowled at me, and led me to one of the desk-like frames, upon which were four large open trays full of compartments of various sizes.
“Here you are!” he said, “lay holt;” and he thrust a little heavy square paper packet into my hands. “It’s burjoyce,”—so it sounded to me; “look alive, and then come for another.”
He went away, leaving me balancing the heavy packet in my hand. It was about the size and thickness of a small book, but what next to do with it, or how I was to do it, I, did not know.
Of course I know now that it was the petty, contemptible revenge of a little-minded man to set me, a totally uninstructed novice, to do that which an old practised compositor will shelve if he can, as an uncongenial task. To “dis a page of burjoyce pie” was, in fact, to distribute—that is, place in its proper compartments, or in the case—every large and small letter, space and point, of a quantity ofbourgeois, or ordinary newspaper type, that had been accidentally mixed, or “pied” as it is technically termed. The distribution of an ordinary page or column of type is comparatively easy, for the skilled workman reads it off word by word, and drops the letters dexterously in the compartment assigned; but in “pie” the letters and spaces are all jumbled, and the task is troublesome and slow.
There was I, then, with about as easy a task as if I had been suddenly handed the various parts of a watch, and told to put them together; and I felt helpless and ashamed, not daring to interrupt any of the busy men intent upon their work at the various frames.
An hour must have elapsed before I felt that I dare venture to go towards Mr Grimstone’s glass case, and I was about desperately to tell him that I was ignorant and helpless, and quite unfit to do what he had set me, when the dark, stern-eyed man I had seen on the previous day came round by where I stood.
He gazed at me curiously, and gave me a nod, and was passing on, when I desperately exclaimed:
“If you please, sir—”
“Eh? What, is it, my boy?” he said.
“I was told, sir, to dis this pie,” I said, fearful that I was making some absurd blunder about the wordpie.
“Well, why don’t you do it? Get the sponge off the stone and give it a good soaking in a galley.”
“I’m very sorry, sir,” I said, encouraged by his quiet, kind way, “but I don’t know how.”
“Haven’t you been in a printing-office before?”
“No, sir.”
“And never distributed type?”
“No, sir.”
“How absurd! Who set you to do it?”
“Mr Grimstone, sir.”
“But does he know that you have never handled type?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ass?” he muttered. “Here, come along with me, my man. No; better not, perhaps. Leave that packet alone, my boy. There, lay it down. Stand here and try and learn the case.”
“Learn the case, sir?” I said, with my heart sinking within me at being given another impossible task.
“Yes, it’s very easy; only wants time,” he said kindly; “Here, pick up one of these pieces of type,” he continued, dexterously taking up a little thin bit of black metal, “like this, and turn it in your fingers, and see what letter is stamped on the end, and then put it back in the same compartment of the case.”
“Is that tray the case, sir?”
“Yes, quite right, go on. You can come and ask me anything you don’t know.”
I darted a grateful look at him, and eagerly began my task, though in fear and trembling, lest Mr Grimstone should come and find fault because I had not “dis’d the pie.”
Few people, I think, realise the sufferings of a sensitive boy at school, or at his first launching into life, when set to some task beyond his perception or powers. The dread of being considered stupid; the fear of the task-masters, the strangeness, the uncongenial surroundings, all combine to make up a state of mental torture that produces illness; and yet it is often ridiculed, and the sufferer treated with cruelty for non-performance of that which, simple to the initiated, is to him in his ignorance an utter impossibility.
It was with a sense of relief I cannot describe that I began to lift the metal types one by one, looked at them, and put them back; and I was not long in finding out that, while the capital letters in the upper of the two trays before me ran nearly regularly A, B, C, D, and so on, and beneath them the figures 1, 2, 3, 4, etc, the lower case was a perfect puzzle.
The compartments were not like those above, all small squares, and the same size, but some were very large, and some very small; some were long, and some were square; but I found that they were made upon a regular plan. For instance, there was one very large compartment nearly in the middle at the top of the lower tray, that was evidently six times as big as the small compartments; while below and beside it were many more that were four times as big as the small ones; others being only twice as big.
I naturally examined the large compartment first, and found it full of little thin slips of metal nearly an inch long, at the end of each of which, and beautifully formed, was the lettere. There was no doubt about it, and it was evident that there were moree’sthan anything else. Then under it I found the compartment full ofh’s, and away to the left,n’sandm’s;t’s,d’s,u’s,o’s,a’s, andr’swere in other large compartments, and it gradually dawned upon my mind that these letters were placed where they would be handiest for use, and that there was the largest number of those that would be most frequently required.
My surmise was quite right, and with this idea as the key, I soon found out that little-usedxandzwere in very small numbers, in the most out-of-the-way parts of the tray, just as were the double lettersaeandoe, etc. One compartment close under my hand, and very full, puzzled me the most, for the pieces of metal therein were short, and had no letters on the end; and at last, after trying in vain to understand their meaning, I determined to ask the dark man next time he passed, and went on trying to master my task with the strange clicking noise made by the men going on all round.
I hardly dared glance about, but in the casual glimpses I stole, I began to understand now that the men about me were picking up, letter by letter, the types, to form words, and arranging them in little curiously shaped tools they held in their hands.
I had been busily learning my letters for about half an hour, when the big, fat-headed boy came up to me.
“Now then!” he said, in a bullying tone that was a very good imitation of the overseer’s, “done that page?”
“No!” I said.
“You ain’t?”
“No; I did not know how.”
“Oh, you’ll catch it, just, when Mr Grimstone knows. You ain’t coming here to do just as you like; and I tell you what it is—”
“Well, what is it, boy?” said a quiet, stern voice, and my heart, gave a joyful thump as I saw the dark man come up.
“Please, he ain’t dis’d this here pie.”
“No; he did not know how. I set him to learn the case.”
“But Mr Grimstone said he was to—”
“Jem Smith, do you know you are a fool?” said the dark man quietly.
“I dessay I am, Mr Hallett, but Mr Grimstone said as this boy was to—”
“And if you don’t go about your business I shall box your ears.”
“No, you—”
He did not finish his sentence, for there was something in the deep-set dark eyes which had such an effect upon him that he sneaked off, and I turned to my protector.
“Would you please tell me why these little things have no letters on their ends, sir?” I said.
“Because they are spaces, my boy. Don’t you remember in reading a book there is a little distance between every word?”
“Yes, sir,” I said eagerly; “and after a full stop there’s a bigger space.”
“To be sure!” he said, smiling, and his pale face looked less stern and severe. “Look: these little things, as you call them, but as we call them, thick spaces, go between every word, and these square ones after a full stop. How are you getting on?”
“I know that’se, sir.”
“Yes; go on.”
“And that’sh, and thato, andu—m—a—r—i—s—o—n—t,” I said, touching the boxes in turn.
“Good, very good,” he said, “and what is that?”
“That, sir?—d.”
“No, it isp. And that?”
“Oh, that isb.”
“No, it isq. Now you know the meaning of mind yourp’sandq’s. You must learn the difference, and try to recollect this; all the letters, you see, are reversed, like a seal.”
“Like the motto on papa’s seal. Yes, I see, sir,” I said eagerly.
“That’s right, my boy,” he said looking at me curiously. “Go on, I am too busy to stay.”
“Now! what’s all this?” said Mr Grimstone, bustling up with Jem Smith.
“Please, sir,” said the latter, “I telled him as he was to—”
“I found the boy unable to do what was set him, Mr Grimstone,” said my protector quietly, “and told him to go on with learning his case. The boy has never been in an office before.”
“That was for me to know, Mr Hallett,” cried the overseer, growing red in the face. “What the devil do you mean by—”
“Interfering, Mr Grimstone? I did it because I was sure you were too good a manager to wish time to be wasted in this large office. And—I must ask you, please when you speak to me, to omit these coarse expressions.”
“Of all the insolence—”
“Insolent or not, sir,” said the dark man sternly, “have the goodness to remember that I always treat you with respect, and I expect the same from you. Excuse me, but a quarrel between us will not improve your position with the men.”
Mr Grimstone looked at him furiously; and turning redder in the face than ever, seemed about to burst into a tirade of angry language, but my protector met his look in a way that quelled him, and turning upon the fat-headed boy, who was looking on open-mouthed, the overseer gave him a sounding box on the ear.
“What are you standing gaping there for, you lazy young scoundrel?” he roared; “go and wash those galleys, and do them well.”
Then, striding off, he went into his glass case, while Jem Smith, in a compartment at the end of an avenue of cases, began to brush some long lengths of type, and whenever I glanced at him, he shook his fist, as he showed his inflamed eyes red with crying and his face blackened by contact with his dirty hands.
My protector, Mr Hallett, had left me at once, and I saw no more of him for some time, as I worked away, sorry at having been the innocent means of getting him into a quarrel. At last, just as I was very intent in puzzling out the difference betweenp’sandq’sI started, for the great lubberly boy came up close behind me.
“I’ll give you a warming when you goes out to dinner, see if I don’t,” he whispered; but he shuffled off directly, as Mr Hallett came towards me, saw that I was busy, and after giving me a friendly nod, went back, leaving his calm, strangely stern face so impressed upon me, that I kept finding myself thinking of him, his eyes seeming to stare at me from out of every box.
But still I worked on, feeling each moment more and more sure of my way, and at last in a fit of enterprise I set to work and managed to find the letters forming my own name, and laid them side by side.
I felt no little nervous dread as dinner-time approached, for Jem Smith’s warming was in waiting; but as one o’clock struck, Mr Hallett came up to me while the other men were hurrying off, and said kindly:
“Did that boy threaten you?”
“He—he said something, sir,” I replied, hesitating.
“I thought so. He’s gone now, so don’t go out to dinner, my man. I can give you a little of mine. I’ll speak to him before you go to-night.”
Chapter Eighteen.My Friend Jem Smith Makes Me Ambitious.I was receiving my first lessons in the fact that there is as much good-will as ill-will in the world—in other words, that there really is, as has been so poetically expressed, a silver lining to every cloud; and I gladly availed myself of Mr Hallett’s kind offer, following him to his frame, as they called the skeleton desks that supported the cases, and there sitting down close by him to partake of some bread and meat which he brought out carefully wrapped in a clean white napkin.“Don’t be afraid, my boy,” he said, “make a good meal; and I should advise you, for the present, to bring your dinner with you and eat it here. Better than going into the streets.”He then ate his own dinner quickly, and without taking the slightest notice of me beyond seeing once that I had a sufficiency of the bread and meat, but took out an oblong memorandum-book, and began busily drawing and making some calculation.As he worked at this, I sat and had a good look at him, and could see that his large, massive head was covered with crisp dark hair that was already slightly sprinkled with grey. From time to time he raised his eyes from his book to look up, as if diving into the distance, or trying to catch some idea that was wandering away from him, and at such moments his deeply set eyes had a curiously intense look about them, while his forehead was deeply marked with thoughtful lines.I don’t think he was more than thirty, but he looked, so to speak, vigorously old, or, rather, worn like some piece of steel that has been used hard, but has grown sharper and more elastic by that use. He was a tall, well-made man, but thin and spare, giving the idea of one who was ascetic in his habits and devoting himself to some particular end.He did not speak to me again, and I was not sorry, for there was that in his face and ways that rather repelled than attracted, and I somehow felt that if he, in his quiet, firm way, were angry with me, I should be more alarmed than by the noisy bullying of Mr Grimstone, the overseer.Two o’clock was signalled by the coming back of the compositors, who resumed their white aprons and rolled up their sleeves, when the sharp clicking noise went on as before. Mr Hallett, at the first entrance of one of his fellow-workmen, had shut his book with a snap, and thrust it into his breast, rolled up the napkin, and then, turning to me with a nod,—“Two o’clock, my boy,” he said. “Get on with your work.”As he spoke he resumed his own, and I went back to my case.I had hardly been there ten seconds, and was diligently making sure which was the compartment containing the letteru, which had a terribly strong resemblance to the lettern, when Mr Grimstone suddenly pounced on me from round the end of the case. I say pounced, for it was so wonderfully like a cat coming upon a mouse. He seemed surprised and disappointed at finding me there, though I did not comprehend his looks then, and after staring hard for a moment or two, he went away.The hours glided away, and I was so interested in what I was doing, that I hardly noticed the lapse of time, while, long before the afternoon was past, the work the men were engaged upon seemed so attractive that I felt impelled to imitate them by trying to pick up the letters forming various words, and then replacing them in the different boxes.The first time it was rather difficult, but the second time I got on pretty well, and I was just beginning for the third time, when Mr Hallett came round my way and caught me in the act. I felt very guilty, but he seemed to approve, and walked away, to return directly with a little sliding steel thing, such as the men were using.“Here’s a stick, my boy; try and place the letters, nick uppermost, in that.”I took the stick, as he called it, and found that as fast as I placed a letter in, it seemed to do its best to jump out again; then one letter got upon another, or two or three appeared to quarrel and join in a regular squabble, so that their awkwardness and utter refusal to lie quietly side by side at last put me in a profuse perspiration.I was busily fumbling about when Mr Grimstone, whose voice I had often heard scolding different men, came round, saw what I was doing, and snatched the composing-stick away.“Tchah! What waste of time! Come along here,” he cried angrily, and I followed him to his glass office, where he sat down upon a worn stool. “Now then,” he said, sharply, “I’ve decided to give you a trial.”I remember thinking that he was very stupid to assume that he had full authority, when I knew that he had not, but, of course, I was silent.“And now mind this, sir: I am overseer here, and what I say I will have done, I have done. You hear?”“Yes, sir,” I said.“And now we understand one another.”Saying this, he bounced down from his stool again, and led me to the end of the large room and through a door into a dirty place with a great leaden sink, water, and brushes, and a pot containing some liquid.Jem Smith was there, having just brought in a long narrow tray containing a column of type.“Here, Smith, show this boy how to wash a galley; and see that he does it well.”Jem Smith grinned at me as soon as we were left alone, and I saw plainly enough that he meant to have some compensation for the box on the ear he had received; but I tried hard to contain myself, and meant to submit patiently to anything that might follow.“Here, ketch hold o’ that galley,” he said sharply, “and look here, young man, don’t you get trying to play the sneak here, and begin getting old Hallett to take your part. He’s only a sneak, and everybody here hates him ’cause he won’t take his beer. You keep away from him, or it’ll be the worse for you. I’ve only got to tell the other boys, and they’ll make it so warm for you as you’ll wish as you’d never come here. Now, then, why don’t you ketch hold o’ that galley?”“I don’t know what a galley is,” I said sturdily.“Don’t know what a galley is,” he said, imitating my way of speaking; “you’re a pretty sort of fellow to come and get work at a printing-office. There, ketch holt, stoopid: that’s the galley; put it here, and you needn’t be so precious frightened of getting your fingers black. There’s the brush, dip it, and fetch all that ink off.”I took the brush, dipped it in the liquor in the pot, and on brushing the surface of the type found that the strong solution easily brought off all the black ink; and I ended as instructed, by thoroughly rinsing the type and placing it to drain.This done, I had to wash several more galleys, with the result that I was made tolerably black; and to make matters worse, my companion brought in a black roller of some soft material, and dabbed it against my cheek.I plucked up my spirit and felt ready to strike out, but somehow I kept my anger down, and after washing the roller in turn, I was allowed to dry my hands and clean my face, which Jem Smith persuaded me to do with the strong solution of potash, making it tingle smartly; and, but for the rapid application of pure water, I believe the skin would have been made sore.This seemed to afford the young ruffian intense delight, and taking up the brush, he dipped it in the potash and tried to brush my hair.I retreated from him as far as I could, but he got between me and the door, and with the malignant pleasure felt by some boys in persecuting those who are weaker than themselves, he caught me by the collar.“Just you call out, that’s all,” he said, “and I’ll half kill you. Hold still, you little sneak. You make so much noise as’ll reach outside, and I’ll jump on you.”We were close beside the lead sink and the pot of solution-lye, as the printers call it; and now a new idea seemed to come into the spiteful young wretch’s mind, for, throwing down the brush, he seized hold of me with both hands, and as we struggled, being much the stronger, he got behind me, thrust his knee violently into my back, and brought me down kneeling before the great earthen pot. And now for the first time I saw what he intended to do, namely, to thrust my face and head into the black caustic solution, and, in spite of my resistance, he got it down lower and lower.I might have shrieked out for help, and I might have cried for mercy; but, moved partly by his threats, partly by shame, I refrained, and made use of all my strength to escape, but in vain; strive as I would, he forced me down lower and lower, and then by one quick effort placed a hand on the back of my head and thrust it right into the filthy water.Fortunately for me it was but a momentary affair, and the next instant he allowed me to struggle up and run blindly to the sink, where, perhaps, a little alarmed by his success, he filled a bowl with clean water, leaving the tap running, as I strove to sluice off the blinding, tingling fluid.I was in the midst of this, and with soaked necktie and collar, kept on bathing my face and hair, when I heard Mr Grimstone’s voice at the door, and hastily thrust my fingers into my ears to clear them.“What’s he doing?”“Washing hisself, sir.”“Washing himself?”“Yes, sir; he said it was such a nasty dirty job to brush galleys that he must have a good clean.”“Where’s the towel?” I said blindly, for my eyes smarted so that I dare not open them, and they grew so painful that I hurried once more to the sink and bathed them with clear water before pressing my hair as dry as I could, and then using my handkerchief to wipe my face.I now opened my eyes, and saw that there was a very dirty jack-towel on a roller behind the door, to which I hastily ran.“Look here, sir,” said Mr Grimstone, as I hastily rubbed away at my head; “we can’t have these goings-on here. What have you been doing?”“I think he’s been using the lye, sir,” cried the young hypocrite. “I told him it was only for the type.”“It isn’t true, sir,” I cried indignantly; when a compositor came up to the door, and Mr Grimstone was called away.The moment he was gone, Smith darted at me, and thrust his doubled fist hard against my face.“You say a word agen me,” he said, “and I’ll half kill yer. I’ll smash yer, that I will, so look out.”He went out of the place, leaving me hot and indignant, rubbing away at my tingling head, which I at length got pretty dry and combed before a scrap of glass stuck by four tacks in a corner; and when I had finished it was in time to see the men just returning from their tea and resuming their work.Not being told to do anything else, I went back to the case, and continued to learn the boxes, not much the worse for my adventure, only feeling uncomfortably wet about the neck.At last the clock pointed to eight, and, following the example of the rest, I hurried out of the great office, eager to get back to Mr Revitts before he went on duty, for I wanted to ask him a question.I got up to the street in Pentonville just as he was coming out of the house, and in answer to his “Halloa! here you are, then,” I caught hold of his arm.“Bill!” I exclaimed, panting with excitement, “can you teach me how to fight?”
I was receiving my first lessons in the fact that there is as much good-will as ill-will in the world—in other words, that there really is, as has been so poetically expressed, a silver lining to every cloud; and I gladly availed myself of Mr Hallett’s kind offer, following him to his frame, as they called the skeleton desks that supported the cases, and there sitting down close by him to partake of some bread and meat which he brought out carefully wrapped in a clean white napkin.
“Don’t be afraid, my boy,” he said, “make a good meal; and I should advise you, for the present, to bring your dinner with you and eat it here. Better than going into the streets.”
He then ate his own dinner quickly, and without taking the slightest notice of me beyond seeing once that I had a sufficiency of the bread and meat, but took out an oblong memorandum-book, and began busily drawing and making some calculation.
As he worked at this, I sat and had a good look at him, and could see that his large, massive head was covered with crisp dark hair that was already slightly sprinkled with grey. From time to time he raised his eyes from his book to look up, as if diving into the distance, or trying to catch some idea that was wandering away from him, and at such moments his deeply set eyes had a curiously intense look about them, while his forehead was deeply marked with thoughtful lines.
I don’t think he was more than thirty, but he looked, so to speak, vigorously old, or, rather, worn like some piece of steel that has been used hard, but has grown sharper and more elastic by that use. He was a tall, well-made man, but thin and spare, giving the idea of one who was ascetic in his habits and devoting himself to some particular end.
He did not speak to me again, and I was not sorry, for there was that in his face and ways that rather repelled than attracted, and I somehow felt that if he, in his quiet, firm way, were angry with me, I should be more alarmed than by the noisy bullying of Mr Grimstone, the overseer.
Two o’clock was signalled by the coming back of the compositors, who resumed their white aprons and rolled up their sleeves, when the sharp clicking noise went on as before. Mr Hallett, at the first entrance of one of his fellow-workmen, had shut his book with a snap, and thrust it into his breast, rolled up the napkin, and then, turning to me with a nod,—
“Two o’clock, my boy,” he said. “Get on with your work.”
As he spoke he resumed his own, and I went back to my case.
I had hardly been there ten seconds, and was diligently making sure which was the compartment containing the letteru, which had a terribly strong resemblance to the lettern, when Mr Grimstone suddenly pounced on me from round the end of the case. I say pounced, for it was so wonderfully like a cat coming upon a mouse. He seemed surprised and disappointed at finding me there, though I did not comprehend his looks then, and after staring hard for a moment or two, he went away.
The hours glided away, and I was so interested in what I was doing, that I hardly noticed the lapse of time, while, long before the afternoon was past, the work the men were engaged upon seemed so attractive that I felt impelled to imitate them by trying to pick up the letters forming various words, and then replacing them in the different boxes.
The first time it was rather difficult, but the second time I got on pretty well, and I was just beginning for the third time, when Mr Hallett came round my way and caught me in the act. I felt very guilty, but he seemed to approve, and walked away, to return directly with a little sliding steel thing, such as the men were using.
“Here’s a stick, my boy; try and place the letters, nick uppermost, in that.”
I took the stick, as he called it, and found that as fast as I placed a letter in, it seemed to do its best to jump out again; then one letter got upon another, or two or three appeared to quarrel and join in a regular squabble, so that their awkwardness and utter refusal to lie quietly side by side at last put me in a profuse perspiration.
I was busily fumbling about when Mr Grimstone, whose voice I had often heard scolding different men, came round, saw what I was doing, and snatched the composing-stick away.
“Tchah! What waste of time! Come along here,” he cried angrily, and I followed him to his glass office, where he sat down upon a worn stool. “Now then,” he said, sharply, “I’ve decided to give you a trial.”
I remember thinking that he was very stupid to assume that he had full authority, when I knew that he had not, but, of course, I was silent.
“And now mind this, sir: I am overseer here, and what I say I will have done, I have done. You hear?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“And now we understand one another.”
Saying this, he bounced down from his stool again, and led me to the end of the large room and through a door into a dirty place with a great leaden sink, water, and brushes, and a pot containing some liquid.
Jem Smith was there, having just brought in a long narrow tray containing a column of type.
“Here, Smith, show this boy how to wash a galley; and see that he does it well.”
Jem Smith grinned at me as soon as we were left alone, and I saw plainly enough that he meant to have some compensation for the box on the ear he had received; but I tried hard to contain myself, and meant to submit patiently to anything that might follow.
“Here, ketch hold o’ that galley,” he said sharply, “and look here, young man, don’t you get trying to play the sneak here, and begin getting old Hallett to take your part. He’s only a sneak, and everybody here hates him ’cause he won’t take his beer. You keep away from him, or it’ll be the worse for you. I’ve only got to tell the other boys, and they’ll make it so warm for you as you’ll wish as you’d never come here. Now, then, why don’t you ketch hold o’ that galley?”
“I don’t know what a galley is,” I said sturdily.
“Don’t know what a galley is,” he said, imitating my way of speaking; “you’re a pretty sort of fellow to come and get work at a printing-office. There, ketch holt, stoopid: that’s the galley; put it here, and you needn’t be so precious frightened of getting your fingers black. There’s the brush, dip it, and fetch all that ink off.”
I took the brush, dipped it in the liquor in the pot, and on brushing the surface of the type found that the strong solution easily brought off all the black ink; and I ended as instructed, by thoroughly rinsing the type and placing it to drain.
This done, I had to wash several more galleys, with the result that I was made tolerably black; and to make matters worse, my companion brought in a black roller of some soft material, and dabbed it against my cheek.
I plucked up my spirit and felt ready to strike out, but somehow I kept my anger down, and after washing the roller in turn, I was allowed to dry my hands and clean my face, which Jem Smith persuaded me to do with the strong solution of potash, making it tingle smartly; and, but for the rapid application of pure water, I believe the skin would have been made sore.
This seemed to afford the young ruffian intense delight, and taking up the brush, he dipped it in the potash and tried to brush my hair.
I retreated from him as far as I could, but he got between me and the door, and with the malignant pleasure felt by some boys in persecuting those who are weaker than themselves, he caught me by the collar.
“Just you call out, that’s all,” he said, “and I’ll half kill you. Hold still, you little sneak. You make so much noise as’ll reach outside, and I’ll jump on you.”
We were close beside the lead sink and the pot of solution-lye, as the printers call it; and now a new idea seemed to come into the spiteful young wretch’s mind, for, throwing down the brush, he seized hold of me with both hands, and as we struggled, being much the stronger, he got behind me, thrust his knee violently into my back, and brought me down kneeling before the great earthen pot. And now for the first time I saw what he intended to do, namely, to thrust my face and head into the black caustic solution, and, in spite of my resistance, he got it down lower and lower.
I might have shrieked out for help, and I might have cried for mercy; but, moved partly by his threats, partly by shame, I refrained, and made use of all my strength to escape, but in vain; strive as I would, he forced me down lower and lower, and then by one quick effort placed a hand on the back of my head and thrust it right into the filthy water.
Fortunately for me it was but a momentary affair, and the next instant he allowed me to struggle up and run blindly to the sink, where, perhaps, a little alarmed by his success, he filled a bowl with clean water, leaving the tap running, as I strove to sluice off the blinding, tingling fluid.
I was in the midst of this, and with soaked necktie and collar, kept on bathing my face and hair, when I heard Mr Grimstone’s voice at the door, and hastily thrust my fingers into my ears to clear them.
“What’s he doing?”
“Washing hisself, sir.”
“Washing himself?”
“Yes, sir; he said it was such a nasty dirty job to brush galleys that he must have a good clean.”
“Where’s the towel?” I said blindly, for my eyes smarted so that I dare not open them, and they grew so painful that I hurried once more to the sink and bathed them with clear water before pressing my hair as dry as I could, and then using my handkerchief to wipe my face.
I now opened my eyes, and saw that there was a very dirty jack-towel on a roller behind the door, to which I hastily ran.
“Look here, sir,” said Mr Grimstone, as I hastily rubbed away at my head; “we can’t have these goings-on here. What have you been doing?”
“I think he’s been using the lye, sir,” cried the young hypocrite. “I told him it was only for the type.”
“It isn’t true, sir,” I cried indignantly; when a compositor came up to the door, and Mr Grimstone was called away.
The moment he was gone, Smith darted at me, and thrust his doubled fist hard against my face.
“You say a word agen me,” he said, “and I’ll half kill yer. I’ll smash yer, that I will, so look out.”
He went out of the place, leaving me hot and indignant, rubbing away at my tingling head, which I at length got pretty dry and combed before a scrap of glass stuck by four tacks in a corner; and when I had finished it was in time to see the men just returning from their tea and resuming their work.
Not being told to do anything else, I went back to the case, and continued to learn the boxes, not much the worse for my adventure, only feeling uncomfortably wet about the neck.
At last the clock pointed to eight, and, following the example of the rest, I hurried out of the great office, eager to get back to Mr Revitts before he went on duty, for I wanted to ask him a question.
I got up to the street in Pentonville just as he was coming out of the house, and in answer to his “Halloa! here you are, then,” I caught hold of his arm.
“Bill!” I exclaimed, panting with excitement, “can you teach me how to fight?”