Page 171 - sons-and-lovers

‘Is it a little silky one—colours of iron and rusty silver?’
‘THAT’S it, my lad. She’s a gem. She’s had five pounds’
worth of pups already, and she’s worth over seven pounds
herself; and she doesn’t weigh twenty ounces.’
The next day the bitch came. She was a shivering, mis-
erable morsel. Paul did not care for her; she seemed so like
a wet rag that would never dry. Then a man called for her,
and began to make coarse jokes. But Mr. Pappleworth nod-
ded 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? Come down here,’ when
he took him into the glass office and fitted him with special
braces for keeping the shoulders square.
But Paul liked the girls best. The men seemed common
and rather dull. He liked them all, but they were uninterest-
ing. Polly, the little brisk overseer downstairs, finding Paul
eating in the cellar, asked him if she could cook him any-
thing on her little stove. Next day his mother gave him a
dish that could be heated up. He took it into the pleasant,
clean room to Polly. And very soon it grew to be an estab-
lished custom that he should have dinner with her. When
he came in at eight in the morning he took his basket to her,
and when he came down at one o’clock she had his dinner
ready.

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