“Done for you,” he cried, shaking hands. “And now my pipe’s out, and we’ll go and have dinner. Wait till I roll down my sleeves and get on my stock. Why, you and I will be as jolly as can be here. It’s rather a long way to go to your work, but you must get up a bit earlier. Two miles night and morning won’t kill you; and I’ve been thinking what we’ll do. You’ve got your sovereign. We’ll go to a place I know, and buy one o’ them little iron fold-up bedsteads and a mattress and pillow and blanket, and stand it there. It’s breaking into your sov, but then you’ll have the bit o’ furniture, which will be your property, so the money won’t be wasted. What do you say?”

I was delighted, and said so.

“Well, then, lookye here,” he continued, as he took great pains with his hair and whiskers before the glass, and then put on and buttoned up his uniform coat, to stand before me a frank, manly fellow of about thirty, “you’re my company this week, and after that you shall put so much of your salary into the stock to pay for living, and we shall both be free and independent, and what’s left you can shove in the bank.”

“In the bank?”

“Yes, savings-bank. I don’t mind telling you as an old friend I’ve got forty-four pun ten there.”

“Mary has thirty-seven pounds in a savings-bank,” I said.

“Now there’s for you!” he said.

“Yes, she told me so; but perhaps I oughtn’t to have told you.”

“Well,” he said seriously, “I s’pose you oughtn’t, because it was told you in confidence, but I’m glad you did. She never told me.”

“Did you ever tell her how much you had saved?”

“No, that I didn’t, only as I was saving, so it’s all fair. Look here, youngster – I mean Antony,” he said, after standing staring in the glass for a few minutes, “I tell you what it is, you coming up has about brought matters to a head.”

“Has it, Bill?”

“Yes, it hayve, my boy. Do you know, I don’t for the life of me know why we two have been waiting; do you?”

“No,” I said shaking my head.

“No, nor more don’t Mary, I’ll bet a sixpence. We got engaged to one another, and then we said as it wouldn’t be sensible, to get married at once, as we might both see some one we liked better, don’t you see?”

“Yes,” I said, feeling puzzled all the same, “it was very prudent.”

“I could have got married lots o’ times since, but I’ve never seen a girl as I liked so well, and I s’pose Mary hasn’t seen a chap, for she keeps on writing.”

“Oh yes; and she thinks a deal of you. She’s very proud of you.”

“Is she, though?” he said, with a satisfied smile, and giving his head a shake in his stock. “Well, then, I tell you what: I’ll write and ask Mary to say the day, and then meet her at the station. We’ll take a little bigger place, and she’ll come up and make us both comfortable. What do you say to that?”

I clapped my hands, and he stood smiling in an exceedingly simple way, and looking like a very big overgrown boy, for a few moments, before turning himself round to me.

“See that,” he said, in a quiet business-like way. “I was laughing at you for being soft and green just now, and I’m blessed if I don’t feel as if I was ten times worse. Come along, company, it’s ever so late, and my report says hot mutton chop, a cup of tea, and some bread and butter.”

That evening, after a hearty meal, for which Revitts insisted upon paying, there was just time to make the purchases he proposed, which almost melted the whole of my sovereign, and then it was time for him to go on duty.

“They’ve cost a deal,” he said thoughtfully, “but then you’ve still got the money, only in another shape. Now, you get back home and take in the things when they come, and then sit and read a bit, and afterwards go to bed. I wouldn’t go out, if I was you.”

We parted, and I followed out his directions, being shrewd enough to see that he thought me hardly fit to be trusted alone.

The next morning I woke to find it was half-past six, and that Revitts had come home and was preparing for bed. He looked tired out, and was very black and dirty, having been, he said, at a fire; but he was not too much fatigued to give me a friendly bit or two of advice as to getting my breakfast and going down to the office.

“Have a good breakfast before you start, my boy, and get some bread and cheese for your lunch – that’s twopence. When you come back you’ll find the tea-things out, and you can make dinner and tea too.”

In good time I started, leaving Revitts sleeping off his night’s fatigue, and about ten minutes to ten I was at the door of the great printing-office, flushed with exercise and dread, but eager all the same to make a beginning.

I hesitated as to whether I should go in at once or wait till it struck ten, but I thought that perhaps I might be some time before I saw Mr Ruddle, so I walked straight in, and the man reading the paper in his gloss case looked up at me in a very ill-used way as I stopped at his window.

“You again?” he said gruffly. “Well, what is it?”

“If you please, I’ve come to work,” I said.

“Work? Why, it’s ten o’clock. Why weren’t you here at eight?”

“Mr Ruddle said ten o’clock, sir, and I want to see him.”

“Oh!” he said gruffly, as if he were the gatekeeper of an earthly paradise. “Well, I s’pose you must pass in. Go on.”

I went on into the passage, feeling as if the doorkeeper was the most important personage there, and as if the proprietors must make a practice of asking permission to go into their own place.

I went, then, nervously down the passage till I came to the door of the room where I had seen Messrs Ruddle and Lister. It was ajar, and there were loud voices talking, and though I knocked they went on.

“Stern firmness is one thing, Grimstone,” I heard Mr Ruddle saying, “and bullying another.”

“But you don’t consider, sir, that I bully the men, do you?” said another voice which was quite familiar to me.

“You may call it what you like, Grimstone. There, I’m busy now.”

There was a sharp step, and the door was flung wide open and closed, when my friend the overseer, who had been so rough to me on the previous day, came out and pretty nearly knocked me down.

Chapter Seventeen.
My First Literary Efforts. I Make Another Friend

The overseer and I stood in the dim light gazing at one another for a few moments, during which I seemed to read in his sharp, harsh face an air of resentment at my presence.

“Hallo!” he said, in an angry voice, and evidently rejoicing at having encountered some one upon whom he could vent a little of the anger seething within him. “What, are you here again, you young vagabond? Didn’t I tell you yesterday to go about your business? Be off with you, or I’ll send for a policeman. How dare you! What do you mean?”

“But please, sir,” I remonstrated.

“Will you be off?” he roared; and I felt that I was about to be driven from the place, when the proprietor’s door was sharply opened and Mr Lister appeared.

“Confound it all, Grimstone,” he cried, “what’s the matter now? Look here, sir; I will not have this bullying and noise in the place.”

“Your father never spoke to me like that, Mr John, when he was alive.”

“My father put up with a great deal from you, Grimstone, because you were an old and faithful servant of the firm; but that is no reason why I, his son, should submit to what is sometimes bordering on insolence.”

“Insolence, Mr John?”

“Yes, Grimstone, insolence.”

“What is the matter?” said Mr Ruddle, coming out.

“Mr John says I’m insolent, Mr Ruddle,” said the overseer angrily; “was I ever insolent to you, sir, or his father?”

“Well, if you want the truth, Grimstone, you often were very insolent, only we put up with it for old acquaintance’ sake. But what’s the matter now?”

“I was just speaking to this young vagabond, who persists in hanging about the place, sir, when Mr John came out and attacked me, sir.”

“Don’t call names, Grimstone,” said Mr Lister hotly. “This young vagabond, as you call him, is a fresh boy whom Mr Ruddle has taken on, and whom I desire you to treat kindly.”

“Why didn’t he speak, then,” said the overseer angrily; “how was I to know that he was engaged? In Mr Lister senior’s time the engaging of boys for the office was left to the overseer.”

He stalked off, evidently in high dudgeon, leaving the masters gazing at one another.

“He grows insufferable,” said Mr Lister angrily. “One would think the place belonged to him.”

“Yes, he is rough,” said Mr Ruddle; “but he’s a good overseer, John, and a faithful old servant. He was with us when we first began. Well, my boy, you’ve come then; now go upstairs to the composing-room, and ask Mr Grimstone to give you a job; he’ll be a bit cross, I dare say, but you must not mind that.”

“No; sir; I’ll try not.”

“That’s right,” he said, giving me a friendly nod, and I hurried upstairs and walked right through the composing-room to Mr Grimstone’s glass case.

He saw me coming, but, though I tapped softly at the door several times, he refused to take any notice of me for some minutes, during which I had to stand uncomfortably aware of the fact that I had given terrible offence to this man in authority, by allowing myself to be engaged downstairs after he had bade me go.

He was busy, pen in hand, looking over some long, narrow pieces of paper, and kept on turning them over and over, making his spectacles flash as he changed his position, and directing the top of his very shiny bald head at me, till at last he raised it, gave a start, and turned as if astonished at seeing me there; but it was poor pantomime and badly done.

“Well, what is it?” he said.

“If you please, sir, Mr Lister sent me up to ask you to give me a job.”

“Me give you a job,” he said, in a menacing tone; “why, I thought you would be hanger-on down below, and not come up into the office, where you’d get your nice white hands dirtied. What job can I give you? What can you do? What do you know? Here, Smith, take this boy, and give him a page of pie to dis.”

The big, fat-headed boy came up from a distant part of the room, scowled at me, and led me to one of the desk-like frames, upon which were four large open trays full of compartments of various sizes.

“Here you are!” he said, “lay holt;” and he thrust a little heavy square paper packet into my hands. “It’s burjoyce,” – so it sounded to me; “look alive, and then come for another.”

He went away, leaving me balancing the heavy packet in my hand. It was about the size and thickness of a small book, but what next to do with it, or how I was to do it, I, did not know.

Of course I know now that it was the petty, contemptible revenge of a little-minded man to set me, a totally uninstructed novice, to do that which an old practised compositor will shelve if he can, as an uncongenial task. To “dis a page of burjoyce pie” was, in fact, to distribute – that is, place in its proper compartments, or in the case – every large and small letter, space and point, of a quantity of bourgeois, or ordinary newspaper type, that had been accidentally mixed, or “pied” as it is technically termed. The distribution of an ordinary page or column of type is comparatively easy, for the skilled workman reads it off word by word, and drops the letters dexterously in the compartment assigned; but in “pie” the letters and spaces are all jumbled, and the task is troublesome and slow.

There was I, then, with about as easy a task as if I had been suddenly handed the various parts of a watch, and told to put them together; and I felt helpless and ashamed, not daring to interrupt any of the busy men intent upon their work at the various frames.

An hour must have elapsed before I felt that I dare venture to go towards Mr Grimstone’s glass case, and I was about desperately to tell him that I was ignorant and helpless, and quite unfit to do what he had set me, when the dark, stern-eyed man I had seen on the previous day came round by where I stood.

He gazed at me curiously, and gave me a nod, and was passing on, when I desperately exclaimed:

“If you please, sir – ”

“Eh? What, is it, my boy?” he said.

“I was told, sir, to dis this pie,” I said, fearful that I was making some absurd blunder about the word pie.

“Well, why don’t you do it? Get the sponge off the stone and give it a good soaking in a galley.”

“I’m very sorry, sir,” I said, encouraged by his quiet, kind way, “but I don’t know how.”

“Haven’t you been in a printing-office before?”

“No, sir.”

“And never distributed type?”

“No, sir.”

“How absurd! Who set you to do it?”

“Mr Grimstone, sir.”

“But does he know that you have never handled type?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ass?” he muttered. “Here, come along with me, my man. No; better not, perhaps. Leave that packet alone, my boy. There, lay it down. Stand here and try and learn the case.”

“Learn the case, sir?” I said, with my heart sinking within me at being given another impossible task.

“Yes, it’s very easy; only wants time,” he said kindly; “Here, pick up one of these pieces of type,” he continued, dexterously taking up a little thin bit of black metal, “like this, and turn it in your fingers, and see what letter is stamped on the end, and then put it back in the same compartment of the case.”

“Is that tray the case, sir?”

“Yes, quite right, go on. You can come and ask me anything you don’t know.”

I darted a grateful look at him, and eagerly began my task, though in fear and trembling, lest Mr Grimstone should come and find fault because I had not “dis’d the pie.”

Few people, I think, realise the sufferings of a sensitive boy at school, or at his first launching into life, when set to some task beyond his perception or powers. The dread of being considered stupid; the fear of the task-masters, the strangeness, the uncongenial surroundings, all combine to make up a state of mental torture that produces illness; and yet it is often ridiculed, and the sufferer treated with cruelty for non-performance of that which, simple to the initiated, is to him in his ignorance an utter impossibility.

It was with a sense of relief I cannot describe that I began to lift the metal types one by one, looked at them, and put them back; and I was not long in finding out that, while the capital letters in the upper of the two trays before me ran nearly regularly A, B, C, D, and so on, and beneath them the figures 1, 2, 3, 4, etc, the lower case was a perfect puzzle.

The compartments were not like those above, all small squares, and the same size, but some were very large, and some very small; some were long, and some were square; but I found that they were made upon a regular plan. For instance, there was one very large compartment nearly in the middle at the top of the lower tray, that was evidently six times as big as the small compartments; while below and beside it were many more that were four times as big as the small ones; others being only twice as big.

I naturally examined the large compartment first, and found it full of little thin slips of metal nearly an inch long, at the end of each of which, and beautifully formed, was the letter e. There was no doubt about it, and it was evident that there were more e’s than anything else. Then under it I found the compartment full of h’s, and away to the left, n’s and m’s; t’s, d’s, u’s, o’s, a’s, and r’s were in other large compartments, and it gradually dawned upon my mind that these letters were placed where they would be handiest for use, and that there was the largest number of those that would be most frequently required.

My surmise was quite right, and with this idea as the key, I soon found out that little-used x and z were in very small numbers, in the most out-of-the-way parts of the tray, just as were the double letters ae and oe, etc. One compartment close under my hand, and very full, puzzled me the most, for the pieces of metal therein were short, and had no letters on the end; and at last, after trying in vain to understand their meaning, I determined to ask the dark man next time he passed, and went on trying to master my task with the strange clicking noise made by the men going on all round.

I hardly dared glance about, but in the casual glimpses I stole, I began to understand now that the men about me were picking up, letter by letter, the types, to form words, and arranging them in little curiously shaped tools they held in their hands.

I had been busily learning my letters for about half an hour, when the big, fat-headed boy came up to me.

“Now then!” he said, in a bullying tone that was a very good imitation of the overseer’s, “done that page?”

“No!” I said.

“You ain’t?”

“No; I did not know how.”

“Oh, you’ll catch it, just, when Mr Grimstone knows. You ain’t coming here to do just as you like; and I tell you what it is – ”

“Well, what is it, boy?” said a quiet, stern voice, and my heart, gave a joyful thump as I saw the dark man come up.

“Please, he ain’t dis’d this here pie.”

“No; he did not know how. I set him to learn the case.”

“But Mr Grimstone said he was to – ”

“Jem Smith, do you know you are a fool?” said the dark man quietly.

“I dessay I am, Mr Hallett, but Mr Grimstone said as this boy was to – ”

“And if you don’t go about your business I shall box your ears.”

“No, you – ”

He did not finish his sentence, for there was something in the deep-set dark eyes which had such an effect upon him that he sneaked off, and I turned to my protector.

“Would you please tell me why these little things have no letters on their ends, sir?” I said.

“Because they are spaces, my boy. Don’t you remember in reading a book there is a little distance between every word?”

“Yes, sir,” I said eagerly; “and after a full stop there’s a bigger space.”

“To be sure!” he said, smiling, and his pale face looked less stern and severe. “Look: these little things, as you call them, but as we call them, thick spaces, go between every word, and these square ones after a full stop. How are you getting on?”

“I know that’s e, sir.”

“Yes; go on.”

“And that’s h, and that o, and u—m—a—r—i—s—o—n—t,” I said, touching the boxes in turn.

“Good, very good,” he said, “and what is that?”

“That, sir? —d.”

“No, it is p. And that?”

“Oh, that is b.”

“No, it is q. Now you know the meaning of mind your p’s and q’s. You must learn the difference, and try to recollect this; all the letters, you see, are reversed, like a seal.”

“Like the motto on papa’s seal. Yes, I see, sir,” I said eagerly.

“That’s right, my boy,” he said looking at me curiously. “Go on, I am too busy to stay.”

“Now! what’s all this?” said Mr Grimstone, bustling up with Jem Smith.

“Please, sir,” said the latter, “I telled him as he was to – ”

“I found the boy unable to do what was set him, Mr Grimstone,” said my protector quietly, “and told him to go on with learning his case. The boy has never been in an office before.”

“That was for me to know, Mr Hallett,” cried the overseer, growing red in the face. “What the devil do you mean by – ”

“Interfering, Mr Grimstone? I did it because I was sure you were too good a manager to wish time to be wasted in this large office. And – I must ask you, please when you speak to me, to omit these coarse expressions.”

“Of all the insolence – ”

“Insolent or not, sir,” said the dark man sternly, “have the goodness to remember that I always treat you with respect, and I expect the same from you. Excuse me, but a quarrel between us will not improve your position with the men.”

Mr Grimstone looked at him furiously; and turning redder in the face than ever, seemed about to burst into a tirade of angry language, but my protector met his look in a way that quelled him, and turning upon the fat-headed boy, who was looking on open-mouthed, the overseer gave him a sounding box on the ear.

“What are you standing gaping there for, you lazy young scoundrel?” he roared; “go and wash those galleys, and do them well.”

Then, striding off, he went into his glass case, while Jem Smith, in a compartment at the end of an avenue of cases, began to brush some long lengths of type, and whenever I glanced at him, he shook his fist, as he showed his inflamed eyes red with crying and his face blackened by contact with his dirty hands.

My protector, Mr Hallett, had left me at once, and I saw no more of him for some time, as I worked away, sorry at having been the innocent means of getting him into a quarrel. At last, just as I was very intent in puzzling out the difference between p’s and q’s I started, for the great lubberly boy came up close behind me.

“I’ll give you a warming when you goes out to dinner, see if I don’t,” he whispered; but he shuffled off directly, as Mr Hallett came towards me, saw that I was busy, and after giving me a friendly nod, went back, leaving his calm, strangely stern face so impressed upon me, that I kept finding myself thinking of him, his eyes seeming to stare at me from out of every box.

But still I worked on, feeling each moment more and more sure of my way, and at last in a fit of enterprise I set to work and managed to find the letters forming my own name, and laid them side by side.

I felt no little nervous dread as dinner-time approached, for Jem Smith’s warming was in waiting; but as one o’clock struck, Mr Hallett came up to me while the other men were hurrying off, and said kindly:

“Did that boy threaten you?”

“He – he said something, sir,” I replied, hesitating.

“I thought so. He’s gone now, so don’t go out to dinner, my man. I can give you a little of mine. I’ll speak to him before you go to-night.”