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. Pappleworth disappeared to catch his train: he lived in the
suburbs. At one o'clock, Paul, feeling very lost, took his dinner-basket
down into the stockroom in the basement, that had the long table on
trestles, and ate his meal hurriedly, alone in that cellar of gloom and
desolation. Then he went out of doors. The brightness and the freedom of
the streets made him feel adventurous and happy. But at two o'clock
he was back in the corner of the big room. Soon the work-girls went
trooping past, making remarks. It was the commoner girls who worked
upstairs at the heavy tasks of truss-making and the finishing of
artificial limbs. He waited for Mr. Pappleworth, not knowing what to do,
sitting scribbling on the yellow order-paper. Mr. Pappleworth came at
twenty minutes to 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 parcels 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 everything 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 morning. 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 with
what came. And Paul stayed at Jordan's, although all the time he was
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