WHEN Nan May opened shop, she saw that men were pulling down as much of
the ship-yard wall opposite as stood between two chalk lines. She
thought no more of the thing at the time, not guessing how nearly it
concerned her. For this was to be a new workmen's gate to the ship-yard
and passing workmen might change the fortunes of a shop. For that day,
however, there was no sign but the demand of a bricklayer's labourer for
a penn'orth of cheese.
It was as bad a day as Saturday, in the matter of trade--indeed there was
no drunken man to buy lard--and the woman's heart grew heavier as the
empty hours went. Bessy stood at the back-parlour door, pale and
anxious, but striving to lift a brave face. Before one o'clock there was
dinner to be prepared; not that either Bessy or her mother could eat, but
for Johnny. And at a quarter past one both met him at the door as
cheerfully as they could; and indeed they were eager to hear of his
fortunes. They wondered to see him coming with the long man who lived
next door; and the long man, for his part, was awkward and nervous when
he saw them. At first he hung back, as though to let Johnny go on alone;
but he changed his mind, and came striding ahead hastily, looking neither
to right nor to left, and plunged in at his door.
Johnny was hungry and in high spirits. He and Long Hicks, it seemed, had
been bedding down a junk ring for a piston, Johnny easing the bolts and
nuts, and Long Hicks doing the other work. He said nothing of the round
square, but talked greatly of slide-valves and cranks, till Bessy judged
him a full engineer already. Between his mouthfuls he illustrated the
proper handling of hammer and file, and reprehended the sinful waste of
spoiling the surface of a new file on the outer skin of a fresh iron
casting. It cheered Nan May to see the boy taking so heartily to his
work, through all her secret dread that she might lack the means to keep
him at it. Johnny glanced anxiously at the clock from time to time, and
at last declared that he must knock for Long Hicks, who was plainly
forgetting how late it was. And in the end he rushed away to disturb the
tall man ten minutes too soon, and hurried off to Maidment and Hurst's,
there to take his own new metal ticket from the great board, and drop it
duly into the box.
The afternoon went busily at the factory, and busy days followed. Johnny
acquired his first tool, a steel foot-rule, and carried it in public
places with a full quarter of its length visible at the top of its
appointed pocket. It was the way of all young apprentices to do this;
the rule, they would say, thus being carried convenient for the hand.
But it was an exact science among the observant to judge a lad's
experience inversely by scale of the inches exposed, going at the rate of
half an inch a year. A lad through two years of his "time" would show no
more of his rule than two inches; by the end of four years one of these
inches would have vanished; as his twenty-first birthday approached, the
last inch shrank to a mere hint of bright metal; and nobody ever saw the
foot-rule of a full journeyman, except he were using it.
Johnny's christening, postponed by the accident of old Ben Cutts, came
when he was first put to a small lathe to try his hand at turning bolts.
For when, returning from breakfast, he belted his lathe, he did not
perceive that the water-can had been tied to the belt; realising it,
however, the next instant, when it flew over the shafting and discharged
the water on his head. Then he was free of the shop; suffering no more
than the rest from the workshop pranks habitual among the younger lads,
and joining in them: gammoning newer lads than himself with demands for
the round square, and oppressing them with urgent messages to testy
gaffers--that a cockroach had got in the foo-foo valve, that the
donkey-man wanted an order for a new nosebag, and the like. Grew able,
moreover, in workshop policy, making good interest with the storekeeper,
who might sometimes oblige with the loan of a hammer. For a lost hammer
meant a fine of three-and-sixpence, and when yours was stolen--everybody
stole everybody else's hammer--a borrowed one would tide you over till
you could steal another. Making friends, too, with the tool-smith, at a
slight expense in drinks; though able to punish him also if necessary, by
the secret bedevilment of his fire with iron borings. Learned to
manufacture an apparent water-crack by way of excuse for a broken file--a
water-crack made with a touch of grease well squeezed between the broken
ends. In short, became an initiated 'prentice engineer. In the trade
itself, moreover, he was not slow, and Mr. Cottam had once mentioned him
(though Johnny did not know it) as "none so bad a boy; one as can work
'is own 'ead." Until his first enthusiasm had worn off, he never ceased
from questioning Long Hicks, in his hours of leisure, on matters
concerning steam-engines; so that the retiring Hicks grew almost out of
touch with the accordion that had been the solace of his solitude. The
tall man had never met quite so inquisitive an apprentice; engineering
was in the blood, he supposed. He had guessed the boy's mother an
engineer's wife when first Johnny came to his bench, because of the extra
button Nan May had been careful to sew on his jacket cuff; a button used
to tighten the sleeve, that it might not catch the driver on a lathe.
It was early in Johnny's experience--indeed he had been scarce a
fortnight at the engine-shop--when a man coming in from an outdoor job
just before dinner told Cottam the foreman, that an old friend was
awaiting him at the gate, looking for a job.
"An' 'oo's the ol' friend?" asked Cottam, severely distrustful.
"Mr. 'Enery Butson, Esquire," the man answered, with a grin.
"What? Butson?" the gaffer ejaculated, and his eyes grew rounder.
"Butson? Agen? I'd--damme, I'd as soon 'ave a brass monkey!" And Mr.
Cottam stumped indignantly up the shop.
"Sing'lar, that," observed a labourer who was helping an erector with a
little yacht engine near Johnny's bench. "Sing'lar like what I 'eard the
gaffer say at Lumley's when Butson wanted a job there. 'What?' sez 'e.
'Butson? Why, I'd rayther 'ave a chaney dawg auf my gran'mother's
mantelpiece,' 'e sez. ''E wouldn't spile castin's,' 'e sez."
There were grins between the men who heard, for it would seem that Mr.
Butson was not unknown among them. But when Johnny told his mother at
dinner, she thought the men rude and ignorant; and she was especially
surprised at Mr. Cottam.
For some little while Johnny wondered at the girl who was hunting for a
sick lady in the street on that dark Monday morning. He looked out for
her on his way to and from his work, resolved, if he met her, to ask how
the search had fared, and how the lady was. But he saw nothing of her,
and the thing began to drop from his mind. Till a Saturday afternoon,
when he went to see a new "ram" launched; for half-way to the ship-yard
he saw a pretty girl--and surely it was the same. In no tears nor
trouble now, indeed, but most disconcertingly composed and dignified--yet
surely the same. Johnny hesitated, and stopped: and then most
precipitately resumed his walk. For truly this was a very awful young
person, icily unconscious of him, her casual glance flung serenely
through his head and over it. . . . Perhaps it wasn't the same, after
all; and if not--well it was lucky he had said nothing. . . .
Nevertheless his inner feeling was that he had made no mistake; more,
that the girl remembered him, but was proud and would not own it. It
didn't matter, he said to himself. But the afternoon went a little flat;
the launch was less interesting than one might have expected. There was
a great iron hull, tricked out with flags; and when men knocked away the
dog-shores with sledge-hammers, the ship slid away, cradle and all, into
the water. There wasn't much in that. Of course, if you knocked away
the dog-shores, the ship was bound to slide: plainly enough. _That_
wasn't very interesting. Johnny felt vaguely resentful of the
proceedings. . . . But still he wondered afresh at the lost lady who was
ill out of doors so early in the morning.