8. Entrance to Industry

Some three weeks later—it was in the summer holidays—Morcar came home from a morning on his bicycle to find his mother in her cooking apron with her sleeves rolled up, packing the red and gold dessert service into a large wicker skep marked J.H.M. He looked at these initials enquiringly, to conceal from himself the sinking of his heart. His mother followed the direction of his glance.

“I got your father to keep the skep back when he gave up the mill,” she said. She added in a lower tone: “In case we wanted it.”

A foreboding of death and disaster so long ago, so practical and so accurately fulfilled, wounded Harry; it seemed mean and disloyal, a treachery against his father.

“When are we moving?” he asked abruptly.

“Next Friday,” replied his mother.

In later life nothing struck Morcar with such a sense of tragicomedy as his mother’s immutable preference for indirect communication. Mrs. Morcar never spoke to him directly of their financial situation and their plans, but it emerged in the course of the next few days that his father had left almost nothing on which his wife and son could live and that they were moving into a tiny house, really a workman’s cottage, in a row along Hurst Road. The College Board of Governors had been very kind, remarked Mrs. Morcar on another occasion; they had accepted the notice for Harry as though it had been given at the beginning of the term, so that there would be no further fees to pay—this was her method of informing her son that he was to leave school at once. Harry did not care twopence about leaving school, but to leave Charlie was a different matter. The Shaws were away on their summer holiday just then, at Bridlington, and Morcar was missing Charlie sorely. Now he found he was to do without Charlie always—except, of course, in the evenings and at the weekends. It was a bleak outlook. He sat silent, stunned.

“Mr. Shaw is giving you the chance for your father’s sake, you know, Harry,” observed Mrs. Morcar next day, as mother and son sat at tea together. “So you must work hard and do the best you can.”

So he was to go to work at Mr. Shaw’s! Immediately Harry’s world, which had looked so black, took on a happy, rosy, hopeful hue. He asked nothing better than to go to work at once—he was a big burly lad in his middle teens, he felt strong and shrewd and full of common sense, sure to do well; textile processes, in some way or other, were quite familiar to him and not in the least intimidating. It would be splendid to get out into the world, to earn money, to support his mother; he felt suddenly no longer a boy but a man, with a wide range of adventures opening before him, highly coloured, exciting. If now it had been discovered that his next year’s fees at school had been paid by his father, so that he could remain there another year, he would have been disappointed. And to work at Mr. Shaw’s! What a piece of luck! In his father’s lifetime he had not thought much of Mr. Shaw’s place, for Mr. Shaw leased half a brick mill at the bottom of the town between Eastgate and Irebridge, and its interior arrangements had seemed to Morcar incommodious and muddled. But now Prospect Mills seemed Paradise, since Charlie would be working there presently. A gush of joy and hope filled Morcar’s heart; he smiled all over his candid pleasant face, and asked:

“When am I to start, Mother?”

“The Monday after Wakes Week,” replied Mrs. Morcar. She looked doubtfully at his bright face and seemed to ponder, resting her hand maternally on the top of the cosied teapot. After a while she sighed and said: “Well!” and roused herself. When she had cleared away the meal she returned to the room with one of Mr. Morcar’s blue and white check aprons—the kind known locally as a “brat”—in her hand. “Try this on,” she said.

Although Harry was not yet full-grown and lacked several inches of his father’s height, his shoulders were already broader.

“It doesn’t matter—I can leave the top tape undone,” he offered.

Mrs. Morcar did not even reply to this suggestion; she took out her sewing basket, unpicked every seam and with her customary skill completely refashioned the overall.

On the following Friday the Morcars moved. Harry was active in the preparations, which he enjoyed, and rode on the box of the furniture van conveying a selection of their previous furniture to their new home. The van drew up at Number 102 Hurst Road, Mrs. Morcar who had gone on ahead opened the door, Harry clambered down and ran in. He stopped, aghast. The room was tiny, with a steep narrow staircase leading directly from the rear. He turned on his mother with an impetuous question, but she was gazing at him with such a look of anguish that he was astonished and alarmed—he had never seen such a naked expression of feeling in her face before—and mumbling instead something about helping to unload, ran out of the house again. As he helped the removal man to let down the back of the van and secure it by chains so that it formed a low platform, there was a tumult of feeling in his heart, which presently settled into the conviction, firm though inarticulate, unclarified, that this was a disaster and he must bear it like a man. Accordingly he became very cheerful and even facetious in his manner of handling the furniture, carrying chairs light-heartedly on his head and shouting “Whoa!” to the removal man as they struggled together to edge the Morcars’ sideboard through the tiny door. There was a neat little scullery in the rear with which he professed himself enormously satisfied, but it was beyond his powers of deception to show pleasure over the outside lavatory beyond, reached by a descent of five stone steps into the bowels of the earth.

While they were in the very thick of the removal there came a knock at the front door and Harry found himself ushering in an elderly lady of the Eastgate congregation whom he knew by sight, carrying a parcel about which she seemed to have mysterious business with his mother. The parcel when opened contained, as he saw, a length of crash and a few scraps of brightly coloured material which proved to be intended as patterns. Mrs. Morcar was vexed at being caught in her apron with her sleeves rolled up and repeatedly expressed this vexation by observing that they would be straight tomorrow, but she broke off the work of removal to draw out from a sideboard cupboard a box full of coloured skeins of silk in great variety, and proceeded to match them to the patterns with a good deal of care and animation. Harry hovering in the doorway could not but be interested in this matching process, and approved his mother’s choice amongst the bright twisted skeins, which however was overruled by the visitor. As the latter left she remarked:

“About next Wednesday, then?”

“Next Wednesday,” replied Mrs. Morcar firmly.

“I’ll call about the same time?”

“Harry can bring them round if you like,” offered Mrs. Morcar.

“Oh, no, I’ll call,” said the visitor hastily, stepping into the street. She looked back over her shoulder and added in the high artificial voice of embarrassed kindness: “And you’ll perhaps think over that other matter and let me have your decision at the same time?”

“You have my decision now,” said Mrs. Morcar fiercely. “What I do for Eastgate I do for love.”

“Well,” hesitated the other woman. “I honour you for it of course, Mrs. Morcar.” She seemed to wish to urge the matter further but to find it impossible in view of Mrs. Morcar’s stern bearing, and gathering her skirt into her hand went off down the street.

That very night, though plainly wearied by the removal which in any case was not yet quite complete, Mrs. Morcar cut the crash into lengths for antimacassars, tacked their edges ready for hemstitching, and applied orange-coloured transfers to the ends, pressing the flimsy paper with a hot iron to imprint the pattern on the material.

Harry pondered. He admitted readily that, in the Yorkshire phrase, he was “slow in the uptake,” but the process when once accomplished was fairly sure. When he woke in the morning he knew that his mother meant to earn money by her talent for sewing and embroidery, that the Eastgate Dorcas meeting had offered to pay her for her services to them in cutting-out and general direction, that Mrs. Morcar had refused. Then he felt such a restless suspense, such a burning eager desire for the Monday after Wakes Week to arrive when he could go to work, that he could hardly contain himself. He threw the furniture about the house with a strength and energy which astonished his mother; with a slight frown of concentration down the centre of his fair placid forehead he carried in coal, cleaned the rusty range until it shone, rode off on his bicycle to fetch provisions, on his return swilled down the five lavatory steps. He observed that the other houses in the row kept their steps, the floor and the slab on the top of the tiny odorous chamber yellow-stoned, and remembering vaguely the utensils he had seen employed for this purpose, looked about in the scullery and found a bucket containing a brush, a cloth and a knob of the yellow stuff. A rough fibre mat, he seemed to remember, was also necessary. He found one, filled the bucket with water and going out to the back premises, knelt on the second step and began experiments with the yellow-stone. Suddenly his mother rushed from the house and snatched the bucket from him. Her face was white with fury.

“Come in,” she whispered in a tone of raging disgust. “Harry! Come in at once.”

“I’ll just finish this,” said Morcar stolidly.

“No!” whispered his mother as before. “Come in at once!”

“Who’s going to do it, then? You?” said Morcar.

“It’s not a man’s work,” said Mrs. Morcar, trembling with anger.

Harry considered. “I think I’d better do it,” he said presently. His tone was mild but final; he seemed to know that he was quite as obstinate as his mother. They were both holding the handle of the bucket; Morcar gave it a jerk towards him and the water slopped over on his mother’s dress. With an angry exclamation she released her hold and moved with a swift step into the house.

Half an hour later, just as he finished the roof slab, she summoned him to a meal; her face was calm and she made no reference to the incident. Harry made no such reference either; he replaced the bucket and the mat in their proper places, washed his hands at the sink and sat down to the table without a word. He then discovered that—for almost the first time in his life—he was not hungry. But it was necessary to eat, he felt, or the battle would be lost, so he chewed his way through the Saturday’s steak staunchly.

The next week was a protracted ordeal. It was Annotsfield Wakes: the holiday week when the mills slumbered and all the Annotsfield inhabitants who could afford disported themselves at the seaside. The town lay empty beneath the bright hot sunshine; the looms were silent, most of the shops were closed. Morcar mooned about listlessly, alone, for the Shaws were still absent. His mother urged him to get out into the fresh air while he still had the chance, but as he had never experienced the limitations to freedom imposed by the hours of regular labour, he took this recommendation impatiently. However, there was nothing else to do; so he rode out on his bicycle every day. His favourite round was one often ridden by Charlie and himself; up the moorland road to the Moorcock, then by the rough path over the brow to Scape Scar, down the steep slope into the Ire Valley and down the valley road to Irebridge. But in Irebridge, instead of crossing the Ire and regaining Hurst by Hurstholt Road, he kept on the road towards Annotsfield so that he might turn off into the small side street where stood Mr. Shaw’s business premises.

Prospect Mills was not perhaps a very inspiring sight; low and smoke-blackened, with dirty windows, it belied its name by gazing into a row of equally smoke-blackened small dark houses. To the side, wooden gates, once red now pink with time, gave on the yard Mr. Shaw shared with another tenant—who must be a wool-comber, decided Harry, judging from two or three huge taut sacks tumbled nonchalantly against each other in the far corner. Even in August the yard looked dank and muddy, and the squat brick chimney seemed to exude dirt. The double-leaf door to the office, also pinkish and peeling, was closed to-day, revealing to the full its need of a new coat of paint. But Harry, cycling slowly past, or glancing at the mill sideways from the shelter of a cross street—he would not for the world, of course, have been discovered openly viewing it—found it in the highest degree romantic. It was the centre of his hopes and dreams. That faded door was his entrance to the great world, the world where he would work for his own living, the world where he would be a man. He longed for next Monday with almost unbearable intensity. The days seemed years, and as if in corroboration his very face in the glass looked older by the end of the week.

About Wednesday an idea struck him. The antimacassars were already finished and called for, so he felt at liberty to ask his mother to do some sewing for him. He took his school cap down from its peg and offered it to her. “Can you unpick the badge?” he demanded gruffly. For answer his mother covered her face with her hands and sat thus, motionless. Morcar wriggled irritably; all this emotion! Mrs. Morcar suddenly took down her hands, unpicked the crest and pressed the cap with a hot iron from within, so that the marks of the stitches became invisible.

At last it was Saturday, and the people of Annotsfield began to return to their homes to resume their labour. In the evening Hurst Road was full of workers in bright clothes carrying bags and baskets and paper parcels, streaming homeward from the station. Morcar slept wretchedly, tossing from side to side in a feverish though vague ambition. Sunday came. Chapel in the morning passed the time on well, and there were some good fighting hymns which Morcar sang with gusto. The afternoon was terrible. He went down to the Sycamores to see if by some happy chance the Shaws’ plans had been changed and they had returned earlier—a picture postcard from Charlie had announced their coming on Monday morning. But the house was empty. Harry went round to the back; he would like to have watered the garden with a hosepipe, but dared not because it was Sunday. He tried the door of the Den, but it was locked. The father of the family who now lived next door, in the Morcars’ old house, was in the garden as he returned and spoke to him kindly; Harry coloured and hurried away. Then there was tea, then there was Chapel, rather sad and sentimental so that his mother quietly wept; and then at last as they walked homeward Harry saw thin feathers of smoke beginning to rise from the mill chimneys. The men were re-lighting the boiler fires ready for work on the morrow. Then there was supper; then there was a slight ceremony in laying ready the brat, setting his alarm clock and discussing with his mother what time he would be home for dinner. Harry wished to stay at the mill all day without a break, but his mother was firm for his return at midday—on his bicycle, she said, the distance between Prospect Mills and Hurst Road was small. Mr. Shaw, she said, was sure to expect it. She was equally certain that Mr. Shaw would not require Harry to go to Prospect before breakfast tomorrow morning. Harry, who had envisaged himself climbing the steps on the stroke of six, was keenly disappointed and argued the matter stoutly.

“But Mr. Shaw won’t be there himself, child, and he’ll be vexed if somebody puts you on to work that he doesn’t intend.”

Harry yielded on both points only as far as the first day was concerned. “I shall see what Mr. Shaw wants,” he repeated several times in an earnest important tone. “I must do what he wants, Mother.”

His mother sighed at last, told him he had better get off to bed and kissed him goodnight. To his astonishment he fell asleep immediately.

He woke at just the right moment next morning and sprang out of bed at once. His mother seemed still asleep for no sounds came from the next room and he wondered with some diffidence whether he would need—for the first time in his life—to wake her, but luckily just as the problem became acute he heard her stirring. She was prompt with his meal and nothing occurred to delay him, and soon he was riding down Hurst Road towards Annotsfield. The morning was rather cool and dull, but the birds were singing in the park trees. Morcar was keenly happy. At last! At last! He rode with beautiful precision, but without any schoolboy flourishes, down the hill and across the knot of traffic in the centre of Annotsfield and along Cloth Hall Street and East-gate, weaving in and out of trams with sober skill.

At last he reached Prospect Mills. Half the red door stood open. Morcar picked up his bicycle and carried it in, up the four stone steps, depositing it in the dark back passage where his machine and Charlie’s had so often leaned before; he took the brat out of the bicycle pouch, snatched off his cap and gave a clumsy pat to his thick fair thatch, then pushed open the office door and entered industrial life.

An elderly man with greying hair, thinnish, wearing crooked pince-nez and a morose expression, sat on a high stool at the sloping desk which ran down the centre of the room. Morcar did not remember to have seen him there before. He looked up at the boy sideways over his glasses and said: “Yes?”

Blushing and twisting his cap in his hands, Harry gave his name. “I’ve come to work,” he explained.

“Oh yes, I remember now—Mr. Shaw told me,” said the cashier in an unexpectedly kind voice. “Well—Mr. Shaw isn’t here yet; he’s coming back from Bridlington this morning. Well now, let me see. I don’t just know what Mr. Shaw means to put you at.” Harry gazed at him anxiously, and he responded to the appeal. “You can help next door till he comes.” Relieved, Harry hung up his cap on a hook by the door and began to unroll the brat.

“That’s a fine apron you’ve got there,” said the cashier, amused.

“It was father’s,” muttered Harry, looking down.

The cashier stood up and turning him round in a rough but friendly manner tied the tapes for him, then pushed him through the inner door of the office into a long light room which was apparently the Shaws’ warehouse and place of despatch. Various piles of finished pieces stood about on low wooden platforms and shelves; they were not very numerous—“but of course they’d send everything out they could before Wakes,” reflected Harry quickly. A knot of men stood gossiping at the far end of the room; at the cashier’s shout they broke up and in a leisurely way resumed their avocations. One was measuring cloth on the long wooden table, golden with use; another was packing; a third seemed to be in charge, and came towards them enquiringly. The cashier explained Morcar.

“Can you write and figure and such?”

Harry said he could, and accordingly he was put to help a dark short solid man, addressed as Booth by the rest, at the weighing machine. They lifted a piece on to the platform of the scales; the man adjusted the weights and called the result to Harry, who wrote it neatly on the ticket attached to the piece, while Booth entered it in a book; then they lifted the piece off the scales to a table, where Booth stitched its number and some particulars into the end of the fabric in an odd-looking sewing-machine. Harry was happy to find his first textile task so well within his capacity and Booth approved his clear figures and careful accuracy, so they got on together well enough. At first Harry could not understand a word his companion said, his speech was so broadly Yorkshire, but after a time his ear adjusted itself, and he began the long slow process of learning his trade. He was allowed to lift the huge iron weights, to feel the cloth, to discuss its design, texture and destination; presently he was allowed to try the sewing-machine. His first attempt with this was not very successful and he was standing with his hands behind his back watching his companion manipulate the machine slowly so that he might see where he had erred when a distant bustle arose which grew louder and nearer, and presently Mr. Shaw rushed in. The effect was that of a whirlwind; the men’s slow sure actions were galvanised to a feverish tempo; tickets fluttered in the air, pieces of brown paper fell to the ground, tempers rose; two of the men were sent off on errands and left with hurried steps; Mr. Shaw seemed to examine every piece in the place and be dissatisfied with its appearance or its progress. Eventually his tour of the room brought him back to Morcar.

“You’ll have to do more than stand about with your hands behind your back if you’re to stay at Prospect, Morcar,” he cried hastily. “We’ve no room for do-nothings. We’ve no Councillors here.”

The men all looked round with interest, and one sniggered slightly. Harry’s face burned.

“I were just learning him the sewing, Mester Shaw,” said Booth in a vexed defensive tone.

“Work, honest work!” exclaimed Mr. Shaw, vanishing into the office.

As he had not set Harry any other task, the boy remained with Booth, in whose goodwill he found no diminution. But Morcar now felt guilty and unhappy. To be called a do-nothing! And what had Mr. Shaw meant about no Councillors? He had just reached the point of asking himself whether Mr. Shaw could possibly have meant something insulting about his father when his employer stuck his head into the room and called to Booth that the Inspector was at the door, he’d best go help him.

“And you, Morcar,” he added on a savage note, frowning: “Make yourself useful—if you can.”

Booth accordingly crossed the office and clattered down the steps, Morcar at his heels. At the door stood a flat horse-drawn cart, from which two men were throwing back a waterproof cover, revealing a couple of heavy wooden boxes and some fifty-six-pound iron bar weights of the kind Morcar had seen for the first time that morning.

“Give us a hand with this lot,” invited one of the men.

Booth and Morcar took a box between them and staggered up the stairs. Morcar would have descended to help with the iron weights, but was prevented by his companion.

“He’s not got all his strength yet, you see,” explained Booth to the Inspector. “One o’ them weights would pull his inside out.”

“Quite right,” agreed the Inspector, unhooking the largest box.

A complicated arrangement of wood and gleaming brass was revealed, nestling in faded velvet. The fascinated Morcar watched this become a wooden tripod secured by links of brass; then the stirrup and beam were placed in position, and the two flat round brass weight-pans allowed to dangle from their thick brass chains. The assistant threw back the lids of other coffers, revealing a smaller beam and a set of spherical brass weights, so gleaming and polished that they seemed made of gold.

“Bring out your weights,” said the Inspector cheerfully, taking a printed record book from his pocket and licking a thumb to turn its long narrow leaves. “Let’s see now; what had you last time? Here we are.” He secured the page by an elastic band and laid a well-pointed pencil beside it on the table.

Aided by his assistant, he checked the mill weighing-machine, which proved to be accurate, and then began to test the Shaws’ bar weights against the standards, on the official beam. Seeing Morcar’s interest in these novel proceedings, all the adults began to explain them to him at once. The Inspector showed him a blank page of the record book, ruled in columns for all kinds of weigh-machines, weights and measures, with C for correct and I for incorrect, divided by a thin red line.

“What happens if they’re incorrect?” asked Harry.

The Inspector turned up one of the weights so that the boy could see in its base a deep oblong hole, at the bottom of which were stamped some hieroglyphics.

“That’s an E.R., you see, for the Crown,” he explained: “And that number means Annotsfield. There’s ’o5, that’s for last year when they were tested, and that letter means the month.”

“But there’s no month beginning with G,” objected Morcar.

“They go by the alphabet,” explained the Inspector. “A for January, you know; G for July.”

“Aye, it would be about July last year when they were done,” conceded Booth.

“It’ll be H this time, then,” proffered Morcar.

“That’s so, my boy. I see you’ve got your head screwed on the right way,” said the Inspector affably. “If they’re incorrect we obliterate the stamp, see? And take them with us to adjust. Unless, of course,” he added gravely: “Some fraud is suspected. Then we seize the weight, and court proceedings would follow. Now then, what about the smaller ones?”

“There’s some in t’cupboard, Harry,” said Booth, busy with the bars. “On’t top shelf.”

Harry, stooping, dragged out one by one a rather mixed collection, as it seemed to him, of four, two and half-pound weights; they looked so dirty compared with the Inspector’s gleaming brass that he felt ashamed of them. As he withdrew his head after one of these forages he found that Mr. Shaw had come into the room and was watching the proceedings benevolently. Morcar was glad to be discovered so obviously making himself useful, and only wished there were more and heavier weights to pull out of the cupboard.

“Is that the lot?” enquired the Inspector at last, pencil poised.

“That’s the lot,” said Booth.

“No! There’s another here,” cried Harry joyously, diving into the bottom of the cupboard. “A big one.” He drew out with some difficulty a fifty-six-pound weight and displayed it with triumph to the company.

To his surprise his discovery was not well received. Mr. Shaw coloured and barked: “Where’s that come from?” while the Inspector opened his eyes and observed on a questioning note: “It wasn’t on the list last year.”

“Where’s it come from, Booth?” repeated Mr. Shaw angrily.

“Nay, I don’t know,” said Booth, scratching his head.

The Inspector turned over the weight and peered into its hole. “Unstamped,” he said.

“Have you seen it before, Booth?” asked Mr. Shaw, his colour deepening.

“I might have—and again I mightn’t. I couldn’t be sure,” muttered Booth cautiously.

The Inspector, tightening his lips, placed the weight on one of the Crown scale pans; his assistant took the cue and laid a standard weight on the other. The eyes of all were fixed on the anonymous weight, which to Harry’s horror slowly rose while the standard descended.

“Light,” said the Inspector drily, making a note in his book—no doubt, thought the dismayed Harry, he was putting it below the red line. “Any more in that cupboard, young man?”

“No,” said Harry, shaking his head emphatically. To be completely convincing he threw back the door. The Inspector crouched and peered in. The expression on Mr. Shaw’s face as he watched this was really strange.

“No,” said the Inspector, rising. “No more here. I’d best take this one back with me for adjustment, Mr. Shaw.”

“Aye, do,” said Mr. Shaw affably, turning on his heel and leaving the room.

The mill weights were stamped and the standard weights and beams were repacked rapidly, in silence, and in silence the equipment was carried through the office and down the stairs to the cart. The Inspector, Harry noticed, carried the faulty weight himself; when he had placed it on the cart, he took a label from his pocket and wrote on it Shaw, Prospect Mills, light and tied it to the weight’s handle. The cart drove off, the Inspector walking at its side, and Booth and Morcar reentered the mill. Just as Harry approached the doorway between the office and the warehouse, Mr. Shaw came up full tilt; he was talking over his shoulder to one of the men, and not seeing Harry cannoned into him violently.

“Sorry!” said Harry cheerfully.

“Get out of my way!” shouted Mr. Shaw, suddenly crimson. “Get out of my way, can’t you! Here I take you on to give you a chance, and you do nothing but make a confounded nuisance of yourself all day. Here, Booth! Take him away and find him something to do, can’t you? For heaven’s sake keep him out of my sight for a while.” He pushed Harry out of the office and banged the door.

Harry, dumbfounded, stood quite still for a moment, then turned to Booth.

“Never mind—don’t take on—Mester Shaw’s a bit hot-tempered,” said Booth consolingly. “Ah, there’s t’buzzer,” he added with relief, as the shrill wail filled the air. “Are you going home for your dinner?” Harry nodded. “Be off with you then—Mester Shaw’ll have forgotten all about it by th’ afternoon. Best go out t’other way,” he concluded, jerking his head towards the back premises.

Harry took the hint, and after dejectedly removing the brat, found a side door which led him into the yard. He came out into the street past the red wooden gates, turned into the mill again and had begun lifting out his bicycle when he remembered his cap, which hung in the office. “I could leave it till this afternoon,” he thought. But he did not wish to leave it till the afternoon. Very quietly he approached the office door. To his great joy it stood ajar a few inches. Sliding his hand through the opening with extreme care, he stood on tiptoe, and by extending his arm to its utmost reach managed to finger his cap. But it was too distant; he could not lift it from the peg. After several vain attempts he changed his tactics and gave it a sharp flick upwards; it rose above the peg and fell clear below. With infinite good luck, it seemed to him, he caught it as it fell, and withdrew slowly from the room. The next moment he was safely out of the mill and stooping to adjust his trouser clips by the kerb.

He felt strongly impelled to go home by way of Irebridge and Hurst Bank.

“It’s not much further,” he muttered to himself, mounting.

This was not quite true and he had no idea why he wanted to go by Irebridge, but the impulse was too strong to be denied. He turned to the right along the Ire Valley Road. Presently he saw ahead of him the huge stone block of Syke Mills, with its tall clock tower, its five storeys, its soaring circular chimney, its two hundred yards of main road frontage. Syke Mills were the premises of Oldroyds’, one of the great long-established textile firms of the West Riding. Morcar drew near to the wide archway which led to the interior yard. The iron gates stood open. His front wheel wobbled; he dismounted and propped his bicycle carefully against the kerb. His heart beat thick and fast. He knew now why he had come this way home; he wanted to get a job in Oldroyds’, whose name he remembered particularly from Mr. Shaw’s odd story about cutting a strip from their patterns. He would try Oldroyds’ on his way home, Armitages’ on the way back after dinner. If he couldn’t get into either place, he would try something smaller next day. He crossed the line of the archway slowly, made out the letters William Oldroyd and Sons in curving script on the brass plate let into the wall, almost obliterated by eighty or ninety years of polishing—then suddenly hung back, intimidated. Dare he really pass that impressive glossy brown door, climb those fine brass-bound cork-carpeted stairs? What should he say? What did one say when applying for a job, especially for a job which did not exist save in one’s own imagination? But on the other hand … He started forward.

“Make up your mind!” shouted a loud sardonic voice almost in his ear.

“Ackroyd!” rebuked another voice severely.

Harry, whirling round, saw that he had been almost run down by a dark-green open motor-car, of which the chauffeur, a young man in olive-green to match the car, was bellowing at him indignantly. Harry sprang to one side, the chauffeur braked with violence; the car stopped a few yards within the archway and the boy found himself face to face with a handsome, dark, sallow man in late middle age who looked rather ill and was frowning sternly. Harry had never been so near one of the new motor-cars before and he was sure the passenger in this one was Mr. William Brigg Oldroyd, the present head of the firm; crimson with confusion, he gaped and fixed his ingenuous grey eyes on the millowner appealingly.

“Do you work for us?” inquired Mr. Oldroyd, stretching out a hand to open the car door.

His accent, his shirt-cuff, his gold cuff-links and the handsome signet ring on his little finger were so superior to anything Harry had known before that his confusion mounted; he struggled unsuccessfully first to open the door then to remove himself from its path, stammering: “No. That is, not yet.” Wringing out the necessary courage to add: “I should like to,” required the greatest effort he had yet made in life.

“Ah,” said Mr. Oldroyd. By this time he had descended from the car and was standing on the threshold of the office building; a man whom Harry at once judged to be the works manager came out with papers in his hand to meet him. “What’s your name?”

“Henry Morcar.”

“He’ll be Councillor Morcar’s son, I daresay,” offered the manager. Harry nodded. “I thought John William Shaw was taking you on for your father’s sake—I’m sure I’ve heard him say so often enough,” concluded the manager, not without a touch of sarcasm at the expense of Mr. Shaw’s benevolence.

“I won’t go where I’m not wanted!” burst out Morcar suddenly.

“Quite right, my boy,” approved Mr. Oldroyd. “What department would you like to be in, eh? What would you like to be when you grow up?”

“A designer,” blurted Morcar to his own astonishment.

“You’ll have to study hard for that. You must attend classes at the Technical College in the evenings. And even then you may not be a designer—designing requires a special talent,” said Mr. Oldroyd.

Morcar drank in the information about the Technical College with rapture. As for talent, somehow he did not worry. He smiled happily.

“Well—have we room for a lad up there?” asked Mr. Oldroyd, turning to the manager.

“I daresay we could find room,” replied the manager accommodatingly.

“When do you want to start, my boy?”

“Two o’clock?” suggested Harry, after a rapid calculation.

Mr. Oldroyd laughed. “Put him on,” he said to the manager, nodding. He began to mount the stairs.

Saying hastily: “Ask for me here at two,” the manager followed him.

The jubilant Morcar pushed his bicycle up Hurst Bank so rapidly that when he reached the Sycamores he was crimson and breathless. He propped the machine against the Shaws’ front porch, took off his cap, wiped the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief which showed marks of the morning’s toil, sniffed to reassure himself, and walked into the house. The dining-room door stood open and the room was empty; probably the Shaws were eating their meal in the cellar kitchen, as was their habit on non-ceremonial occasions during the frequent crises when their current maid left them. Morcar listened at the cellar-head; voices floated up from below. He descended cautiously, then threw open the kitchen door. Yes; the whole Shaw family was seated at table, eating one of Mrs. Shaw’s admirable raspberry and red-currant pies—Morcar’s mouth positively watered to see it.

“I don’t want to take advantage of your kindness Mr. Shaw so I’ve got myself a job at Oldroyds’,” he announced breathlessly in a loud shrill tone, then waited for the thunderbolt to fall.

The Shaws’ heads all flew round towards him, then flew round towards Mr. Shaw, as if actuated by clockwork. Charlie’s face was white, Mrs. Shaw’s elongated with horror, Winnie’s round and smiling impishly. Morcar turned his eyes, with theirs, towards the head of Prospect Mills. He surprised a strange expression on his late employer’s face; a look which he would almost have believed favouring and friendly had not that been quite unbelievable.

“It’s very kind of you but I don’t want to go where I’m not—needed,” said Morcar.

“Upon my word!” began Mr. Shaw. (“Here it comes,” thought Morcar.) “Upon my word,” continued Mr. Shaw in a surprisingly mild tone: “You know your own mind very clearly, Harry, for a lad of fifteen.”

“He’s almost sixteen, Father,” put in Charlie loyally.

“It’s not everybody has two jobs on their first day in business. But I won’t stand in your light,” continued Mr. Shaw in the same benign strain. “If you want to go to Oldroyds’, go, and good luck go with you.” He gave Morcar a friendly dismissing nod and applied himself to his redcurrant tart.

Astonished and disconcerted, but yet infinitely relieved, Morcar got himself out of the kitchen and stumbled up the steps. He heard a chair pushed back in the room he had left and hoped it was Charlie’s; sure enough by the time he had reached the front porch Charlie had caught him up.

“It won’t make any difference, Charlie, will it?” said Morcar, staring at the handlebars of his bike. “To us, I mean?”

“Don’t be so daft, Morcar!” exploded Charlie in a furious tone. “How could it make any difference to us? Surely you know by this time what I think of Father? You’ve found him out too, that’s all. You did right to leave. He was always jealous of your father, and he’d take it out on you.”

“Jealous of father!” pondered Morcar, astonished. “But why is he so kind about my leaving, then?”

“Nay, I don’t know. He’s got some idea at the back of his mind, I don’t doubt,” said Charlie disgustedly. “You’re well out of it.”

Since Morcar thought this too, he could find nothing to say of a consoling nature. In silence he mounted his machine.

“Come to tea on Saturday,” called Charlie as he rode off.

“Will he—will it be all right?” cried Morcar, brightening.

“Yes—Mother said so. Meet me at half-past two at the end of the road.”

All this had taken a good deal of time, and when Harry rushed into Number 102 shouting: “Quick, Mother! I have to be there at two,” Mrs. Morcar had been waiting dinner for her son long enough to raise her anxiety to a considerable pitch.

“Wherever have you been, Harry? The dinner’s ruined,” she cried severely, seizing an oven-cloth and whisking out the stew. It was so clearly not ruined that her tone became milder as she added: “I don’t suppose Mr. Shaw will mind you being a few minutes late.”

“I’m not at Shaws’ any more,” said Harry promptly.

Mrs. Morcar blanched. “What have you been doing, love?” she wailed.

“I’ve left and gone to Oldroyds’. Mr. Shaw didn’t really want me,” explained her son.

“Oh, Harry! Don’t begin to be wild and difficult just because your poor father’s left us,” implored Mrs. Morcar. “You must go back to Mr. Shaw and apologise, this afternoon.”

“I won’t go where I’m not wanted,” said Morcar, setting his jaw stubbornly. “Mr. Shaw agrees I shall leave, and I’ve got a job at Oldroyds’.”

“What sort of a job?” wailed his mother. “What sort of a chance have you in a big place like that? You’ll have no opportunity for advancement, you’ll be an errand boy all your life.”

“There’s no opportunity for me in Shaws’.”

“There’s more there than anywhere else, love, I’m afraid you’ll find.”

“I won’t go anywhere to be called a nuisance.”

“A nuisance?” shrilled Mrs. Morcar. Her face twitched; crying: “Oh, Fred, Fred!” she burst into passionate tears. She sobbed for a long time, while her son ate his dinner stolidly.

“There’s no need to cry, Mother,” he said at last, exasperated by her continued weeping. “I’ve got a job at Oldroyds’ and I’m to be there by two. Mr. Oldroyd gave me the job himself, and told me to go to the Technical and learn to be a designer.”

“A designer!” exclaimed Mrs. Morcar, startled. In spite of herself she was rather taken by this idea, which marched so closely with her own talents. She looked up and began slowly to wipe her eyes. “But how shall we manage, Harry?” she said in a tremulous tone. “We can’t afford for you to study any more, you’ve got to go to work at once.”

“I’m going to work!” shouted Harry. “I’m going now—it’s ten to two.” Immediately ashamed of shouting at his mother, he hung his head and muttered: “We shall manage all right.”

By pedalling furiously all the way down Hurst Bank at the risk of his neck, he reached Irebridge at two o’clock. He was passed from hand to hand till his suspense was almost intolerable, but by two-thirty-five he was inside a small light upper room in the main block of Syke Mills, giving an indignant affirmative to the Oldroyds’ head designer, Mr. Lucas, who asked him—imagine!—whether he had ever been in a mill or seen a loom before.