ate
their meal. And yet upstairs the atmosphere among them was always jolly
and clear. The cellar and the trestles affected them.

After tea, when all the gases were lighted, WORK went more briskly.
There was the big evening post to get off. The hose came up warm and
newly pressed from the workrooms. Paul had made out the invoices. Now he
had the packing up and addressing to do, then he had to weigh his stock
of parcels on the scales. Everywhere voices were calling weights, there
was the chink of metal, the rapid snapping of string, the hurrying to
old Mr. Melling for stamps. And at last the postman came with his sack,
laughing and jolly. Then everything slacked off, and Paul took his
dinner-basket and ran to the station to catch the eight-twenty train.
The day in the factory was just twelve hours long.

His mother sat waiting for him rather anxiously. He had to walk from
Keston, so was not home until about twenty past nine. And he left the
house before seven in the morning. Mrs. Morel was rather anxious about
his health. But she herself had had to put up with so much that she
expected her children to take the same odds. They must go through with
what came. And Paul stayed at Jordan's, although all the time he was
there his health suffered from the darkness and lack of air and the long
hours.

He came in pale and tired. His mother looked at him. She saw he was
rather pleased, and her anxiety all went.

"Well, and how was it?" she asked.

"Ever so funny, mother," he replied. "You don't have to work a bit hard,
and they're nice with you."

"And did you get on all right?"

"Yes: they only say my writing's bad. But Mr. Pappleworth--he's my
man--said to Mr. Jordan I should be all right. I'm Spiral, mother; you
must come and see. It's ever so nice."

Soon he liked Jordan's. Mr. Pappleworth, who had a certain "saloon bar"
flavour about him, was always natural, and treated him as if he had been
a comrade. Sometimes the "Spiral boss" was irritable, and chewed more
lozenges than ever. Even then, however, he was not offensive, but one
of those people who hurt themselves by their own irritability more than
they hurt other people.

"Haven't you done that YET?" he would cry. "Go on, be a month of
Sundays."

Again, and Paul could understand him least then, he was jocular and in
high spirits.

"I'm going to bring my little Yorkshire terrier bitch tomorrow," he said
jubilantly to Paul.

"What's a Yorkshire terrier?"