l. Not that I did it half so well as he could. He wore very
odd-looking clothes, but he took great care of them, and was always
touching them up, and "reviving" his hat with one of Mrs. O'Flannagan's
irons. He used to sell bottles of the scouring drops to the other
clerks, and once he got me to get my mother to buy some. He gave me a
good many little odd jobs to do for him, but he always thanked me, and
from the beginning to the end of our acquaintance he was invariably
kind.

I remember a very odd scene that happened at the beginning of it.

Mr. Burton (the other clerk, whose time was to expire the following
year, which was to make a vacancy for me) was a very different man from
Moses Benson. He was respectably connected, and looked down on "the
Jew-boy," but he was hot-tempered, and rather slow-witted, and I think
Moses could manage him; and I think it was he who kept their constant
"tiffs" from coming to real quarrels.

One day, very soon after I began office-life, Benson sent me out to get
him some fancy notepaper, and when I came back I saw the red-haired Mr.
Burton standing by the desk and looking rather more sickly and cross
than usual. I laid down the paper and the change, and asked if Benson
wanted anything else. He thanked me exceedingly kindly, and said, "No,"
and I went out of the enclosure and back to the corner where I had been
cutting out some newspaper extracts for my uncle. At the same time I
drew from under my overcoat which was lying there, an old railway volume
of one of Cooper's novels which Charlie had lent me. I ought not to have
been reading novels in office-hours, but I had had to stop short last
night because my candle went out just at the most exciting point, and I
had had no time to see what became of everybody before I started for
town in the morning. I could bear suspense no longer, and plunged into
my book.

How it was in these circumstances that I heard what the two clerks were
saying, I don't know. They talked constantly in these open enclosures,
when they knew I was within hearing. On this occasion I suppose they
thought I had gone out, and it was some minutes before I discovered that
they were talking of me. Burton spoke first, and in an irritated tone.

"You treat this young shaver precious different to the last one."

The Jew spoke very softly, and with an occasional softening of the
consonants in his words. "How obsherving you are!" said he.

Burton snorted. "It don't take mu