t art up to?"

The tone was benignant. Edwin had not been ordered abruptly off to bed,
with a reprimand for late hours and silly proceedings generally. He
sought the reason in vain. One reason was that Darius Clayhanger had
made a grand bargain at Manchester in the purchase of a second-hand
printing machine.

"I'm copying this," he replied slowly, and then all the details tumbled
rashly out of his mouth, one after the other. "Oh, father! I found
this book in the shop, packed away on a top shelf, and I want to borrow
it. I only want to borrow it. And I've bought this paint-box, out of
auntie's half-sovereign. I paid Miss Ingamells the full price... I
thought I'd have a go at some of these architecture things."

Darius glared at the copy.

"Humph!"

"It's only just started, you know."

"Them prize books--have ye done all that?"

"Yes, father."

"And put all the prices down, as I told ye?"

"Yes, father."

Then a pause. Edwin's heart was beating hard.

"I want to do some of these architecture things," he repeated. No
remark from his father. Then he said, fastening his gaze intensely on
the table: "You know, father, what I should really like to be--I should
like to be an architect."

It was out. He had said it.

"Should ye?" said his father, who attached no importance of any kind to
this avowal of a preference. "Well, what you want is a bit o' business
training for a start, I'm thinking."

"Oh, of course!" Edwin concurred, with pathetic eagerness, and added a
piece of information for his father: "I'm only sixteen, aren't I?"

"Sixteen ought to ha' been in bed this two hours and more. Off with
ye!"

Edwin retired in an extraordinary state of relief and happiness.

VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER TWELVE.

MACHINERY.

Rather more than a week later, Edwin had so far entered into the life of
his father's business that he could fully share the excitement caused by
an impending solemnity in the printing office. He was somewhat pleased
with himself, and especially with his seriousness. The memory of school
was slipping away from him in the most extraordinary manner. His only
school-friend, Charlie Orgreave, had departed, with all the
multitudinous Orgreaves, for a month in Wales. He might have written to
the Sunday; the Sunday might have written to him: but the idea of
writing did not occur to either of them; they were both still
sufficiently childlike to accept with fatalism all the consequenc