Sometime passed before William Revitts replied in full to my question.
He had, of course, asked me what I meant, and I had explained to him the
treatment I had received, but his duties and mine kept us a great deal
apart. One night, however, when he had returned to day-duty, he was
seated in his shirt-sleeves talking to me, and said all of a sudden:
"Yes, I could teach you how to fight, Antony."
"And will you?" I said eagerly.
"Give me my 'bacco and pipe off the chimney-piece."
I handed them to him, and waited patiently while he filled and lighted
his pipe, and then all at once, along with a puff of smoke, he
exclaimed:
"No, I sha'n't. Fighting's all blackguardism, as I know as well as most
men. I've had the taking up of some of the beauties as go in for it,
and beauties they are. I don't say as if I was you I wouldn't give that
Master Jem Smith an awful crack for himself if he meddled with me again;
but I should do it when I was in a passion, and when he'd hurt me.
You'll hit as hard again then, and serve him right. Now let's have a
turn at spelling."
We did "have a turn at spelling," and I dictated while Revitts wrote,
varying the task with bits of advice to me--absurd enough, some of them,
while others were as shrewd and full of common-sense.
By that time I had rapidly begun to fish up odds and ends of experience,
such as stood me in good stead, and, in spite of what was really little
better than contemptible persecution on the overseer's part, I was
making some little way at the printing-office.
I shall not soon forget the feeling of pride with which on the first
Friday night I heard my name called out by a business-like clerk with a
book, after he had summoned everyone in the room, and received from him
a little paper-bag containing my wages.
"You haven't been full time, Grace," he said, entering the sum paid in a
book; "but the firm said I was to pay you for the week, as you were a
beginner."
As soon as I thought I was unobserved, I counted out seven shillings, a
sum that showed that I was a little favoured, for honestly I believe
that I was not worth that amount to my employers.
Hardly had I made sure of my good fortune than I had a visit from Jem
Smith, who came up grinning.
"Now, then," he said, "old Grim's gone for the night, and you've got to
come down and pay your footing."
I stared at him in my ignorance, but, fully under the impression that
something unpleasant was meant, I resolutely determined to stay where I
was, and I was saved from further persecution by Mr Hallett coming up,
which was the signal for Jem Smith to sneak off. I asked Hallett what
was meant, and he explained to me that it was a custom for working men
on entering a new place to pay for some beer for their fellow-workmen.
"But don't you pay a penny to the young wolves," he said, and I
determined that I would not.
I was well on in the second week, and during the intervening days I had
been set to every dirty and objectionable task Mr Grimstone could
invent for me, but I did them patiently and well. I had seen nothing of
my employers, and but little of Mr Hallett, who seemed too busy to take
much notice of me; but he somehow had a knack of turning up in
emergencies, just when I required help and counsel, showing that he kept
an eye upon me for my good.
I noticed as I sat beneath a frame eating my dinner in the
composing-room that he always employed a good deal of his time in
drawing or calculating, and I found, too, that he was no great favourite
with his fellow-workmen, who nicknamed him the steam-engine, because he
worked so rapidly and did so much. It was very plain, too, that the
overseer hated him, giving him the most difficult and unpleasant tasks,
but they were always willingly done by Mr Hallett, who was too good a
workman to be spared.
I had just completed the washing of some very dirty type one day, and,
according to orders, made my way up to Mr Grimstone's glass case, very
dirty and grubby-looking, no doubt, when I stared with surprise on
seeing there before me a little cleanly-shaven man who, except in
clothes, was the exact counterpart of Mr Rowle.
Somehow or other I had been so occupied, and my mind so intent upon the
task given me, that I had thought no more about asking to see him; and
now, here he was, Mr Rowle's twin brother, in angry altercation with
the overseer, while Jem Smith stood in the door. The latter had been
let off a good many dirty, tasks of late, and I had succeeded to them,
but the promotion he had received did not seem to have been attended
with success.
"Now look hero, Grimstone," the little man was saying, "you needn't bark
at me, for I don't care a pinch of snuff for all your snarls. I asked
you to send me up the best boy you had, to read, and you sent me your
worst."
"Mr Rowle, it is false, sir."
"And I say it is true, and that you did it all out of your crass
obstinacy and determination to be as disagreeable as you can to
everybody in the place."
"I sent you up one of my best boys, Mr Rowle."
"And I say you sent me your very worst--as thick-headed, stupid a dunce
as ever entered the place. Look here," he continued, flourishing a
sheet of manuscript in one hand, a long slip of printed paper in the
other. "He can't read that plain piece of writing, and as to the print,
why, he's little better."
"No such thing, sir," said Mr Grimstone, fuming.
"Don't tell me `no such thing,'" said the little man fiercely. "Why,
the biggest fool in the office would do better. Here, boy," he cried to
me, as I stood there with my hands as black as dirty type could make
them; "come here."