The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Spirit of Avarice, by W.W. Jacobs

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: A Spirit of Avarice
Odd Craft, Part 11.

Author: W.W. Jacobs

Release Date: April 30, 2004 [EBook #12211]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SPIRIT OF AVARICE ***

Produced by David Widger

ODD CRAFT

By W.W. Jacobs

A SPIRIT OF AVARICE

Mr. John Blows stood listening to the foreman with an air of lofty
disdain. He was a free-born Englishman, and yet he had been summarily
paid off at eleven o'clock in the morning and told that his valuable
services would no longer be required. More than that, the foreman had
passed certain strictures upon his features which, however true they
might be, were quite irrelevant to the fact that Mr. Blows had been
discovered slumbering in a shed when he should have been laying bricks.

[Illustration: "Mr. John Blows stood listening to the foreman with an air
of lofty disdain."]

"Take your ugly face off these 'ere works," said the foreman; "take it
'ome and bury it in the back-yard. Anybody'll be glad to lend you a
spade."

Mr. Blows, in a somewhat fluent reply, reflected severely on the
foreman's immediate ancestors, and the strange lack of good-feeling and
public spirit they had exhibited by allowing him to grow up.

"Take it 'ome and bury it," said the foreman again. "Not under any
plants you've got a liking for."

"I suppose," said Mr. Blows, still referring to his foe's parents, and
now endeavouring to make excuses for them--"I s'pose they was so pleased,
and so surprised when they found that you was a 'uman being, that they
didn't mind anything else."

He walked off with his head in the air, and the other men, who had
partially suspended work to listen, resumed their labours. A modest pint
at the Rising Sun revived his drooping spirits, and he walked home
thinking of several things which he might have said to the foreman if he
had only thought of them in time.

He paused at the open door of his house and, looking in, sniffed at the
smell of mottled soap and dirty water which pervaded it. The stairs were
wet, and a pail stood in the narrow passage. F