"DON'T know what a Yorkshire terrier is? DON'T KNOW A YORKSHIRE--" Mr.
Pappleworth was aghast.

"Is it a little silky one--colours of iron and rusty silver?"

"THAT'S it, my lad. She's a gem. She's had five pounds' worth of pups
already, and she's worth over seven pounds herself; and she doesn't
weigh twenty ounces."

The next day the bitch came. She was a shivering, miserable morsel. Paul
did not care for her; she seemed so like a wet rag that would never
dry. Then a man called for her, and began to make coarse jokes. But Mr.
Pappleworth nodded his head in the direction of the boy, and the talk
went on _sotto voce_.

Mr. Jordan only made one more excursion to watch Paul, and then the only
fault he found was seeing the boy lay his pen on the counter.

"Put your pen in your ear, if you're going to be a clerk. Pen in your
ear!" And one day he said to the lad: "Why don't you hold your shoulders
straighter? Come down here," when he took him into the glass office and
fitted him with special braces for keeping the shoulders square.

But Paul liked the girls best. The men seemed common and rather dull.
He liked them all, but they were uninteresting. Polly, the little brisk
overseer downstairs, finding Paul eating in the cellar, asked him if she
could cook him anything on her little stove. Next day his mother gave
him a dish that could be heated up. He took it into the pleasant, clean
room to Polly. And very soon it grew to be an established custom that he
should have dinner with her. When he came in at eight in the morning he
took his basket to her, and when he came down at one o'clock she had his
dinner ready.

He was not very tall, and pale, with thick chestnut hair, irregular
features, and a wide, full mouth. She was like a small bird. He often
called her a "robinet". Though naturally rather quiet, he would sit and
chatter with her for hours telling her about his home. The girls all
liked to hear him talk. They often gathered in a little circle while he
sat on a bench, and held forth to them, laughing. Some of them regarded
him as a curious little creature, so serious, yet so bright and jolly,
and always so delicate in his way with them. They all liked him, and he
adored them. Polly he felt he belonged to. Then Connie, with her mane of
red hair, her face of apple-blossom, her murmuring voice, such a lady in
her shabby black frock, appealed to his romantic side.

"When you sit winding," he said, "it looks as if you w