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He had a great scorn for Miss Ingamells, who was a personable if somewhat heavy creature of twenty-eight, because she kept company with a young man. He had caught them arm-in-arm and practically hugging each other, one Sunday afternoon in the street. He could see naught but silliness in that kind of thing.
Miss Ingamells, when he went vaguely into the freshly watered shop before breakfast, greeted him in a new tone, and with startling deference asked him what he thought she had better do in regard to the addressing of a certain parcel.
Thus, for a single quarter of "British Mechanic" nearly two hundred ticks and nearly two hundred crossing ticks had to be made in the book, if the work was properly done. However, it was never properly done Miss Ingamells being short of leisure and the errand boy utterly unreliable and Darius wanted it properly done.
It was while he was paying for the cartridge-paper he being, as was indeed proper, on the customers' side of the counter that a heavy loutish boy in an apron entered the shop, blushing. Edwin turned away. This was Miss Ingamells's affair. "If ye please, Mester Peake's sent me. At the name of Peake, Edwin started. He had utterly forgotten the matter. "Master Edwin," said Miss Ingamells drily.
It was only in this relative calm that the Clayhanger family and its dependants began to realise the intensity of the experience through which they had passed, and, in particular, the strain of waiting for events after the printing office had been abandoned by its denizens, The rumour of what had happened, and of what might have happened, had spread about the premises in an instant, and in another instant all the women had collected in the yard; even Miss Ingamells had betrayed the sacred charge of the shop.
But his father resembled Miss Ingamells. Edwin had not dreamt that mankind, and especially his father, was characterised by such simplicity. And yet, on reflection, had he not always found in his father a peculiar ingenuousness, which he could not but look down upon? His father, whom he met crossing the yard, spoke to him almost as he might have spoken to a junior partner.
And now, on meeting his father and Big James and Miss Ingamells in the queer peace of the morning, in the relaxation after tension, and in the complete realisation of the occurrence, Edwin perceived from the demeanour of all that, by an instinctive action extending over perhaps five seconds of time, he had procured for himself a wondrous and apparently permanent respect.
For example, he was obliged to admit within himself a lessening of scorn for the attitude toward each other of Miss Ingamells and her young man. He saw those things in a new light. And he reflected, dazzled by the unforeseen chances of existence: "Yesterday I was at school and to-day I see this!"
Miss Ingamells was momentarily absent. "Father in?" "No, sir." Edwin did not say where his father was, because he had received general instructions never to `volunteer information' on that point. "Where is he?" "He's out, sir." "Oh! Well! Has he left any instructions about those specifications for the Shawport Board School?" "No, sir. I'm afraid he hasn't. But I can ask in the printing office."
And when he had curtly told the paper boy to do portions of the newspaper job which he had always held the paper boy was absolutely incapable of doing, he sent the boy to find Miss Ingamells, informed her where he was going, and followed Mr Orgreave out of the shop.
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