ck cashmere, and
her wrists, coming out of the narrow cuffs, were thin and flat, as she
put down her work nervously. He showed her something that was wrong with
a knee-cap.

"Well," she said, "you needn't come blaming it on to me. It's not my
fault." Her colour mounted to her cheek.

"I never said it WAS your fault. Will you do as I tell you?" replied Mr.
Pappleworth shortly.

"You don't say it's my fault, but you'd like to make out as it was," the
hunchback woman cried, almost in tears. Then she snatched the knee-cap
from her "boss", saying: "Yes, I'll do it for you, but you needn't be
snappy."

"Here's your new lad," said Mr. Pappleworth.

Fanny turned, smiling very gently on Paul.

"Oh!" she said.

"Yes; don't make a softy of him between you."

"It's not us as 'ud make a softy of him," she said indignantly.

"Come on then, Paul," said Mr. Pappleworth.

"Au revoy, Paul," said one of the girls.

There was a titter of laughter. Paul went out, blushing deeply, not
having spoken a word.

The day was very long. All morning the work-people were coming to speak
to Mr. Pappleworth. Paul was writing or learning to make up parcels,
ready for the midday post. At one o'clock, or, rather, at a quarter to
one, Mr. Pappleworth disappeared to catch his train: he lived in the
suburbs. At one o'clock, Paul, feeling very lost, took his dinner-basket
down into the stockroom in the basement, that had the long table on
trestles, and ate his meal hurriedly, alone in that cellar of gloom and
desolation. Then he went out of doors. The brightness and the freedom of
the streets made him feel adventurous and happy. But at two o'clock
he was back in the corner of the big room. Soon the work-girls went
trooping past, making remarks. It was the commoner girls who worked
upstairs at the heavy tasks of truss-making and the finishing of
artificial limbs. He waited for Mr. Pappleworth, not knowing what to do,
sitting scribbling on the yellow order-paper. Mr. Pappleworth came at
twenty minutes to three. Then he sat and gossiped with Paul, treating
the boy entirely as an equal, even in age.

In the afternoon there was never very much to do, unless it were near
the week-end, and the accounts had to be made up. At five o'clock all
the men went down into the dungeon with the table on trestles, and there
they had tea, eating bread-and-butter on the bare, dirty boards, talking
with the same kind of ugly haste and slovenliness with which they