Page 169 - sons-and-lovers

three. Then he sat and gossiped with Paul, treating the boy
entirely as an equal, even in age.
In the afternoon there was never very much to do, unless
it were near the week-end, and the accounts had to be made
up. At five o’clock all the men went down into the dungeon
with the table on trestles, and there they had tea, eating
bread-and-butter on the bare, dirty boards, talking with
the same kind of ugly haste and slovenliness with which
they ate their meal. And yet upstairs the atmosphere among
them was always jolly and clear. The cellar and the trestles
affected them.
After tea, when all the gases were lighted, WORK went
more briskly. There was the big evening post to get off. The
hose came up warm and newly pressed from the workrooms.
Paul had made out the invoices. Now he had the packing up
and addressing to do, then he had to weigh his stock of par-
cels on the scales. Everywhere voices were calling weights,
there was the chink of metal, the rapid snapping of string,
the hurrying to old Mr. Melling for stamps. And at last the
postman came with his sack, laughing and jolly. Then ev-
erything slacked off, and Paul took his dinner-basket and
ran to the station to catch the eight-twenty train. The day in
the factory was just twelve hours long.
His mother sat waiting for him rather anxiously. He had
to walk from Keston, so was not home until about twenty
past nine. And he left the house before seven in the morn-
ing. Mrs. Morel was rather anxious about his health. But she
herself had had to put up with so much that she expected
her children to take the same odds. They must go through

1 Sons and Lovers