Paul was keeping shop. The door, rarely passed by the foot of a customer, stood open to invite the world at large. Armstrong came in with his spectacles resting on his shaggy brows. Paul, who had been wool-gathering, went back to nominative, dative, and ablative. He hated the Eton Latin grammar as he had not learned to hate anything else in life.
‘Any custom?’ asked the father.
‘Nobody,’ said Paul.
‘Paul, lad,’ said Armstrong, after a lengthy pause. He cleared his throat, and laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘Yell reach your twalth birthday next week. It’s time ye were doing something in the warld.’ He pulled down his glasses and looked at the lad gravely. ‘I’ve tauld Mester Reddy ye’ll not be going back to school after the holidays. There’s over-many mouths to keep, and over-many backs to clothe, lad. Ye’ll have to buckle to, like the rest of us.’
‘Yes, father,’ said Paul. The prospect looked welcome, as almost any change does to a boy.
‘What would ye like to be?’ his father asked
‘I dunno,’ said Paul, rubbing his nose hard with the back of one freckled hand.
‘Well, I’ll thenk it over. Ye can get away to your plays now, but the serious purpose o’ life’s beginnin’ for ye.’
Paul needed no further leave. He snatched his cap and was away up the High Street before anybody could find time to tell him that his neck was unwashed, his boots unblacked or unlaced, or his collar disarranged. These reminders were an unfailing grievance to him when they came, and they seemed to hail upon him all day long. With the thought that he was entering the world and beginning his career in earnest, he thrust his hands into his corduroy pockets, swaggering in his walk, and so absorbed that he forgot to touch the street lamp-posts for two or three hundred yards. He stood overcome by this discovery, retraced his steps almost to the shop-door, in spite of his fear of being recalled, and then raced on his original way, laying a hand on each lamp-post as he passed it In this fashion he arrived at the gate of an unpretentious little house which had many reasons for looking glorious and palatial in his eyes. For one thing, it was a private house. No business of any sort was done there, and its inhabitants lived on their own money. Then it stood back from the road, behind iron railings, and had a gravel pathway leading to the front door, and a little bit of orderly garden with one drooping laburnum in it, which in its season hung clear gold blossoms over the roadway. There was a small coach-house beside the main building. It held no vehicle of any sort, but it was a coach-house all the same. Inside the house everything was neat and clean, and to Paul’s mind luxurious. There were carpets in all the living-rooms and bedrooms. There was a piano, there were marble mantelpieces with gold-framed mirrors over them, one to each front-room, and the chambers which held these splendours were familiarly used, and not merely kept for show. Paul had the run of this house, for the orphan children of his mother’s second cousin lived there, and the relationship was recognised.
He rang the bell, and a fresh-coloured, prettyish girl in a smart cap came to the door.