ent. He pointed out to himself how right his father was.
At sixteen one could scarcely begin to be an architect; it was too soon;
and a good business training would not be out of place in any career or
profession.

He was so wrapped up in his days and his nights that he forgot to
inquire why earthenware was made in just the Five Towns. He had grown
too serious for trifles--and all in about a week! True, he was feeling
the temporary excitement of the printing office, which was perhaps
expressed boyishly by the printing staff; but he reckoned that his share
of it was quite adult, frowningly superior, and in a strictly business
sense justifiable and even proper.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TWO.

Darius Clayhanger's printing office was a fine example of the policy of
makeshift which governed and still governs the commercial activity of
the Five Towns. It consisted of the first floor of a nondescript
building which stood at the bottom of the irregularly shaped yard behind
the house and shop, and which formed the southern boundary of the
Clayhanger premises. The antique building had once been part of an
old-fashioned pot-works, but that must have been in the eighteenth
century. Kilns and chimneys of all ages, sizes, and tints rose behind
it to prove that this part of the town was one of the old manufacturing
quarters. The ground-floor of the building, entirely inaccessible from
Clayhanger's yard, had a separate entrance of its own in an alley that
branched off from Woodisun Bank, ran parallel to Wedgwood Street, and
stopped abruptly at the back gate of a saddler's workshop. In the
narrow entry you were like a creeping animal amid the undergrowth of a
forest of chimneys, ovens, and high blank walls. This ground-floor had
been a stable for many years; it was now, however, a baker's storeroom.
Once there had been an interior staircase leading from the ground-floor
to the first-floor, but it had been suppressed in order to save floor
space, and an exterior staircase constructed with its foot in
Clayhanger's yard. To meet the requirement of the staircase, one of the
first-floor windows had been transformed into a door. Further, as the
staircase came against one of the ground-floor windows, and as
Clayhanger's predecessor had objected to those alien windows overlooking
his yard, and as numerous windows were anyhow unnecessary to a stable,
all the ground-floor windows had