after.

'Oh yes, Mr. Armstrong,' she said at the Sunday dinner, 'anybody would
know you were from the country.'

'How?' Paul asked.

'By your hair,' said the lady.

'Oh, well,' said Paul, 'I must get it cut London fashion.'

Mrs. Bryne bit her lips and flashed a look at him. The boarders
tittered, but Paul sat unconscious. He knew that ignorant people
misplaced their aspirates at times, but Mrs. Bryne was a lady, and wore
silk dresses on week-days.

But he had sown a seed of misliking, and it had opportunity to ripen.
Armstrong the elder, with that wholesale want of worldly wisdom which
distinguished him, had arranged that Paul should have a room in Mrs.
Bryne's house, with breakfast and supper on week-days and whole board
on Sundays, on terms which fitted accurately with his earnings. He gave
Paul a pound for pocket-money, and went away without a thought as to
what the lad was to do for his daily dinner. This admirable business
arrangement bore fruit, of course.

At eight o'clock on a February morning Paul presented himself at the
office. The day was foggy and bitter. The street-lamps were alight, and
all the shops yet open were dull yellow with gas-lamps in the fog. He
had to ask his way several times, and only one passenger in four or
five took any notice of him, but he reached his destination as some
neighbouring church clock boomed the hour out of the nowhere of the
upper air. He announced himself by name to a man in a glass-case at the
head of the stairs. The man gave him a surly side-way nod, and Paul, not
understanding, waited for something more.

'Upstairs, ye fool!' said the man.

'It's a cold mornin',' said Paul. That nose o' yours looks a bit
pinched with it. I've half a mind to warm it for you.'

'Well,' said the surly man, 'how often do you want to be spoken to?'

'Once is enough,' said Paul. 'Come outside and I'll gi' thee a lesson in
manners.'

The surly man declined this invitation, and slid down the glass in front
of him. Paul mounted wrathfully. He was more grieved at himself than
at the other fellow, because he had made up his mind to be civil to
everybody, and above all things to put away the Barfield accent, which
he could do quite easily when he thought about it.

In the great room he entered there were rows on rows of compositors'
frames, all dimly illuminated by a single gas-jet, and the air was thick
with fog. One prematurely sharp-looking small boy was performing a sort
of rhy