is so little likelihood of my ever being given a choice, that I haven't wasted time considering.”
“Pah!” he said, contemptuous on his side now. “You only say that because you're too proud to own up what you want and can't get.”
“You know me very well,” she replied coldly.
“I know you think you're terrific great shakes, and that you live under the eternal insult of working in a factory.”
He was very angry and very rude. She merely turned away from him in disdain. He walked whistling down the room, flirted and laughed with Hilda.
Later on he said to himself:
“What was I so impudent to Clara for?” He was rather annoyed with himself, at the same time glad. “Serve her right; she stinks with silent pride,” he said to himself angrily.
In the afternoon he came down. There was a certain weight on his heart which he wanted to remove. He thought to do it by offering her chocolates.
“Have one?” he said. “I bought a handful to sweeten me up.”
To his great relief, she accepted. He sat on the work-bench beside her machine, twisting a piece of silk round his finger. She loved him for his quick, unexpected movements, like a young animal. His feet swung as he pondered. The sweets lay strewn on the bench. She bent over her machine, grinding rhythmically, then stooping to see the stocking that hung beneath, pulled down by the weight. He watched the handsome crouching of her back, and the apron-strings curling on the floor.
“There is always about you,” he said, “a sort of waiting. Whatever I see you doing, you're not really there: you are waiting—like Penelope when she did her weaving.” He could not help a spurt of wickedness. “I'll call you Penelope,” he said.
“Would it make any difference?” she said, carefully removing one of her needles.
“That doesn't matter, so long as it pleases me. Here, I say, you seem to forget I'm your boss. It just occurs to me.”
“And what does that mean?” she asked coolly.
“It means I've got a right to boss you.”
“Is there anything you want to complain about?”
“Oh, I say, you needn't be nasty,” he said angrily.
“I don't know what you want,” she said, continuing her task.
“I want you to treat me nicely and respectfully.”
“Call you 'sir', perhaps?” she asked quietly.
“Yes, call me 'sir'. I should love it.”
“Then I wish you would go upstairs, sir.”
His mouth closed, and a frown came on his face. He jumped suddenly down.
“You're too blessed superior for anything,” he said.
And he went away to the other girls. He felt he was being angrier than he had any need to be. In fact, he doubted slightly that he was showing off. But if he were, then he would. Clara heard him laughing, in a way she hated, with the girls down the next room.
When at evening he went through the department after the girls had gone, he saw his chocolates lying untouched in front of Clara's machine. He left them. In the morning they were still there, and Clara was at work. Later on Minnie, a little brunette they called Pussy, called to him:
“Hey, haven't you got a chocolate for anybody?”
“Sorry, Pussy,” he replied. “I meant to have offered them; then I went and forgot 'em.”
“I think you did,” she answered.
“I'll bring you some this afternoon. You don't want them after they've been lying about, do you?”
“Oh, I'm not particular,” smiled Pussy.
“Oh no,” he said. “They'll be dusty.”
He went up to Clara's bench.
“Sorry I left these things littering about,” he said.
She flushed scarlet. He gathered them together in his fist.
“They'll be dirty now,” he said. “You should have taken them. I wonder why you didn't. I meant to have told you I wanted you to.”
He flung them out of the window into the yard below. He just glanced at her. She winced from his eyes.
In the afternoon he brought another packet.
“Will you take some?” he said, offering them first to Clara. “These are fresh.”
She accepted one, and put it on to the bench.
“Oh, take several—for luck,” he said.
She took a couple more, and put them on the bench also. Then she turned in confusion to her work. He went on up the room.
“Here you are, Pussy,” he said. “Don't be greedy!”
“Are they all for her?” cried the others, rushing up.
“Of course they're not,” he said.
The girls clamoured round. Pussy drew back from her mates.
“Come out!” she cried. “I can have first pick, can't I, Paul?”
“Be nice with 'em,” he said, and went away.
“You ARE a dear,” the girls cried.
“Tenpence,” he answered.
He went past Clara without speaking. She felt the three chocolate creams would burn her if she touched them. It needed all her courage to slip them into the pocket of her apron.
The girls loved him and were afraid of him. He was so nice while he was nice, but if he were offended, so distant, treating them as if they scarcely existed, or not more than the bobbins of thread. And then, if they were impudent, he said quietly: “Do you mind going on with your work,” and stood and watched.
When he celebrated his twenty-third birthday, the house was in trouble. Arthur was just going to be married. His mother was not well. His father, getting an old man, and lame from his accidents, was given a paltry, poor job. Miriam was an eternal reproach. He felt he owed himself to her, yet could not give himself. The house, moreover, needed his support. He was pulled in all directions. He was not glad it was his birthday. It made him bitter.
He got to work at eight o'clock. Most of the clerks had not turned up. The girls were not due till 8.30. As he was changing his coat, he heard a voice behind him say:
“Paul, Paul, I want you.”
It was Fanny, the hunchback, standing at the top of her stairs, her face radiant with a secret. Paul looked at her in astonishment.
“I
