d quickly at Paul.

"See that?"

"Yes."

"Think you can do it all right?"

"Yes."

"All right then, let's see you."

He sprang off his stool. Paul took a pen. Mr. Pappleworth disappeared.
Paul rather liked copying the letters, but he wrote slowly, laboriously,
and exceedingly badly. He was doing the fourth letter, and feeling quite
busy and happy, when Mr. Pappleworth reappeared.

"Now then, how'r' yer getting on? Done 'em?"

He leaned over the boy's shoulder, chewing, and smelling of chlorodyne.

"Strike my bob, lad, but you're a beautiful writer!" he exclaimed
satirically. "Ne'er mind, how many h'yer done? Only three! I'd 'a eaten
'em. Get on, my lad, an' put numbers on 'em. Here, look! Get on!"

Paul ground away at the letters, whilst Mr. Pappleworth fussed over
various jobs. Suddenly the boy started as a shrill whistle sounded near
his ear. Mr. Pappleworth came, took a plug out of a pipe, and said, in
an amazingly cross and bossy voice:

"Yes?"

Paul heard a faint voice, like a woman's, out of the mouth of the tube.
He gazed in wonder, never having seen a speaking-tube before.

"Well," said Mr. Pappleworth disagreeably into the tube, "you'd better
get some of your back work done, then."

Again the woman's tiny voice was heard, sounding pretty and cross.

"I've not time to stand here while you talk," said Mr. Pappleworth, and
he pushed the plug into the tube.

"Come, my lad," he said imploringly to Paul, "there's Polly crying out
for them orders. Can't you buck up a bit? Here, come out!"

He took the book, to Paul's immense chagrin, and began the copying
himself. He worked quickly and well. This done, he seized some strips
of long yellow paper, about three inches wide, and made out the day's
orders for the work-girls.

"You'd better watch me," he said to Paul, working all the while rapidly.
Paul watched the weird little drawings of legs, and thighs, and ankles,
with the strokes across and the numbers, and the few brief directions
which his chief made upon the yellow paper. Then Mr. Pappleworth
finished and jumped up.

"Come on with me," he said, and the yellow papers flying in his hands,
he dashed through a door and down some stairs, into the basement where
the gas was burning. They crossed the cold, damp storeroom, then a
long, dreary room with a long table on trestles, into a smaller, cosy
apartment, not very high, which had been built on to the main building.
In this room a small woman wit