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Updated: June 25, 2025
"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.
"Ne'er mind, how many h'yer done? Only three! I'd 'a eaten 'em. Get on, my lad, an' put numbers on 'em. Here, look! Get on!" Paul ground away at the letters, whilst Mr. Pappleworth fussed over various jobs. Suddenly the boy started as a shrill whistle sounded near his ear. Mr. Pappleworth came, took a plug out of a pipe, and said, in an amazingly cross and bossy voice: "Yes?"
Pappleworth finished and jumped up. "Come on with me," he said, and the yellow papers flying in his hands, he dashed through a door and down some stairs, into the basement where the gas was burning. They crossed the cold, damp storeroom, then a long, dreary room with a long table on trestles, into a smaller, cosy apartment, not very high, which had been built on to the main building.
Finding the lad's impersonal, deliberate gaze of an artist on his face, he got into a fury. "What are yer lookin' at?" he sneered, bullying. The boy glanced away. But the smith used to stand behind the counter and talk to Mr. Pappleworth. His speech was dirty, with a kind of rottenness. Again he found the youth with his cool, critical gaze fixed on his face.
Pappleworth nodded his head in the direction of the boy, and the talk went on sotto voce. Mr. Jordan only made one more excursion to watch Paul, and then the only fault he found was seeing the boy lay his pen on the counter. "Put your pen in your ear, if you're going to be a clerk. Pen in your ear!" And one day he said to the lad: "Why don't you hold your shoulders straighter?
Paul rather liked copying the letters, but he wrote slowly, laboriously, and exceedingly badly. He was doing the fourth letter, and feeling quite busy and happy, when Mr. Pappleworth reappeared. "Now then, how'r' yer getting on? Done 'em?" He leaned over the boy's shoulder, chewing, and smelling of chlorodyne. "Strike my bob, lad, but you're a beautiful writer!" he exclaimed satirically.
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.
Pappleworth subsided on to a stool, and began writing. A girl came up from out of a door just behind, put some newly-pressed elastic web appliances on the counter, and returned. Mr. Pappleworth picked up the whitey-blue knee-band, examined it, and its yellow order-paper quickly, and put it on one side.
A little group of girls, nicely dressed in white aprons, stood talking together. "Have you nothing else to do but talk?" said Mr. Pappleworth. "Only wait for you," said one handsome girl, laughing. "Well, get on, get on," he said. "Come on, my lad. You'll know your road down here again." And Paul ran upstairs after his chief. He was given some checking and invoicing to do.
Paul heard a faint voice, like a woman's, out of the mouth of the tube. He gazed in wonder, never having seen a speaking-tube before. "Well," said Mr. Pappleworth disagreeably into the tube, "you'd better get some of your back work done, then." Again the woman's tiny voice was heard, sounding pretty and cross. "I've not time to stand here while you talk," said Mr.
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