a earnestly. "It's simply
beautiful. Put it down for him, Fanny, if he wants something to paint."

Fanny would not, and yet she wanted to.

"Then I'll take it down myself," said the lad.

"Well, you can if you like," said Fanny.

And he carefully took the pins out of the knot, and the rush of hair, of
uniform dark brown, slid over the humped back.

"What a lovely lot!" he exclaimed.

The girls watched. There was silence. The youth shook the hair loose
from the coil.

"It's splendid!" he said, smelling its perfume. "I'll bet it's worth
pounds."

"I'll leave it you when I die, Paul," said Fanny, half joking.

"You look just like anybody else, sitting drying their hair," said one
of the girls to the long-legged hunchback.

Poor Fanny was morbidly sensitive, always imagining insults. Polly was
curt and businesslike. The two departments were for ever at war, and
Paul was always finding Fanny in tears. Then he was made the recipient
of all her woes, and he had to plead her case with Polly.

So the time went along happily enough. The factory had a homely feel.
No one was rushed or driven. Paul always enjoyed it when the work got
faster, towards post-time, and all the men united in labour. He liked to
watch his fellow-clerks at work. The man was the work and the work was
the man, one thing, for the time being. It was different with the girls.
The real woman never seemed to be there at the task, but as if left out,
waiting.

From the train going home at night he used to watch the lights of the
town, sprinkled thick on the hills, fusing together in a blaze in the
valleys. He felt rich in life and happy. Drawing farther off, there was
a patch of lights at Bulwell like myriad petals shaken to the ground
from the shed stars; and beyond was the red glare of the furnaces,
playing like hot breath on the clouds.

He had to walk two and more miles from Keston home, up two long hills,
down two short hills. He was often tired, and he counted the lamps
climbing the hill above him, how many more to pass. And from the
hilltop, on pitch-dark nights, he looked round on the villages five
or six miles away, that shone like swarms of glittering living things,
almost a heaven against his feet. Marlpool and Heanor scattered the
far-off darkness with brilliance. And occasionally the black valley
space between was traced, violated by a great train rushing south to
London or north to Scotland. The trains roared by like projectiles level