"Well, if you stick well at your drawing in the evenings, and learn the
theory, you'll be a foreman some day--perhaps a manager. It all depends
on yourself. You shall have a chance to show us what you're made of.
That's all we can do--the rest is for yourself, as I've said."
"Yes, sir, thank-you, sir--I'll try." And Mrs. May was audibly thankful
too, and confident of Johnny.
"Very well, it's settled." The gentleman rang a bell, and bade the
junior clerk "Just send for Cottam."
"I have sent for the foreman," he went on, "whose shop you will be in.
He'll look after you as long as you behave well and keep up to your work.
You won't see me very often, but I shall know all about you, remember."
And he turned to his table, and wrote.
Presently there was a sudden thump at the door, which opened slowly and
admitted the foremost part--it was the abdomen--of Cottam the foreman.
He was of middle height, though he seemed short by reason of his
corpulence; deliberate in all his movements, yet hard, muscular, and
active. He turned, as it were on his own axis, at the edge of the door,
shut it with one hand, while he dangled a marine peaked cap in the other;
and looked, with serene composure, from over his scrub of grey beard,
first at Mrs. May, then at Johnny, and last at his employer.
"Oh, Cottam," the gentleman said, writing one more word, and letting drop
his pen, "this lad's name is John May. I expect you'll remember his
father. Bad accident, I believe, in the heavy turning shop; died, in
fact." This with a slight glance at Nan May.
The foreman turned--turned his whole person, for his head was set on his
vast shoulders with no visible neck between--bent a trifle, and inspected
Johnny as he would have inspected some wholly novel and revolutionary
piece of machinery. "Y-u-u-us," he said, with a slowly rising
inflection, expressive of cautious toleration, as of one reserving a
definite opinion. "Y-u-u-us!"
"Well, he's to come on as apprentice, and I'd like him to come into your
shop. There'll be no difficulty about that, will there?"
"N-o-o-o!" with the same deliberate inflection, similarly expressive.
"Then you'd better take him down, and tell the timekeeper. He may as
well begin on Monday, I suppose."
"Y-u-u-us!" tuned once more in an ascending scale. And with that the
acting partner bade Mrs. May good-morning, turned to his writing, and the
business was over.
Cottam the foreman put his cap on his head and led the way through the
outer office, along a corridor, down the stairs and across the yard, with
no indecent haste. It was a good distance to go, and Johnny was vaguely
reminded of a circus procession that had once passed through Loughton,
and that he had followed up for nearly three miles, behind the elephant.
Half-way across the yard the foreman stopped, and made a half turn, so as
to face Nan May as she came up. He raised an immense leathery fist, and
jerked a commensurate thumb over his shoulder. "That's the young
guv'nor," he said in a hoarse whisper, with a confidential twitch of one
cheek that was almost a wink. "That's the young guv'nor, that is. Smart
young chap. Knowed 'im so 'igh." He brought down his hand to the level
of his lowest waistcoat button, twitched his cheek again, nodded, and
walked on.
The timekeeper inhabited a little wooden cabin just within the gates, and
looked out of a pigeon-hole at all comers. Mr. Cottam put his head into
this hole--a close fit--and when he withdrew it, the timekeeper, a grey
man, came out of his side door and stared hard at Johnny. Then he
growled "All right," and went in again.
"Six o'clock o' Monday mornin'," Mr. Cottam pronounced conclusively,
addressing Mrs. May. "Six o'clock o' Monday mornin'. _'Ere_," with a
downward jerk of his thumb to make it plain that somewhere else would not
do. Then, without a glance at Johnny, whom he had disregarded since they
left the office, he turned and walked off. Johnny and his mother were
opening the small door that was cut in the great gate, when Mr. Cottam
stopped and turned. "Mornin'!" he roared, and went on.
Mother and boy went their way joyously. Here was one of Nan May's
troubles dissolved in air, and as for Johnny, a world of wonders was
before him. Now he would understand how steam made engines go, and all
day he would see them going--he would make engines himself, in fact. And
for this delightful pursuit he would be paid. Six shillings a week was
what apprentices got in their first year--a shilling for every day of
work. Next year he would get eight shillings, and then ten, and so on.
And at twenty-one he would be a man indeed, an engineer like his father
before him. More, he was to draw. The gentleman had told him to draw in
his spare time. The clang of hammers was as a merry peal from the works
that lined their way, and the hoots of steamships on the river made them
a moving music.
Nan May wondered to see such merry faces about the streets on the way
home. Truly the place was changed; but, perhaps, after all, it was no
such bad place, even now. The street was quiet where they had seen the
drunken woman, though two very small boys were still kicking a filthy
slice of bacon about the gutter. But three streets beyond they saw her
for a moment. For the blackguard boys had contrived to topple Mother
Born-drunk into a hand-barrow, which they were now trundling along at
such a pace that the bedraggled sufferer could do no more than lie and
cling to the rails, a gasping, uncleanly heap. Truly Emma Pacey's
punishment was upon her.
Bessy brightened wonderfully at the news of Johnny's success. For she
was thoughtful and "old-fashioned" even among the prematurely sage
girl-children of her class, and she had been fretting silently. Now she
hopped about with something of her old activity. She reported that the
next-door neighbour on the left had been persistently peeping over the
wall, and that just before their arrival the peep had been accompanied by
a very artificial cough, meant to attract attention. So Mrs. May went
into the back-yard.
"Mornin', mum," said the next-door neighbour, a very red-faced man in a
dungaree jacket. "Weather's cleared up a bit. I've bin 'avin' 'alf a
day auf, touchin' up things." He sank with a bob behind the wall, and
rose again with a paint-pot in his lifted hand. "Bit o' red paint any
use to ye?"