‘That’s it, is it? Then, I take vedge.’
‘If s an extra penny, mind you. You pays on Saturday.’
The boy turned to Mr. Warr, who made his choice also.
A little later a voice said ‘Halt!’ and there was a clatter of composing-sticks laid smartly down on the cases. Almost at the same instant the small boy came in with a pyramid of plates with flat tin covers. ‘Beef and vedge,’ shrilled the boy, and, setting down his burden, charged out again, returning instantly with another cry of ‘Beef, no vedge.’ He was out and in again with a cry of ‘Pork and vedge,’ and out and in again with a cry of ‘Pork, no vedge.’ Then a shock-headed youth appeared with a basket foil of tin measures and a big can of black beer. He was met with an instant storm of chaff, and allusions of a Rabelaisian sort were made to one Mary for whom he would seem to have had a kindness. He departing, the men set themselves to the serious business of dinner, and, the meal being over, they gathered into groups, and smoked and talked, whilst the small boy cleared away.
An aproned man in a very old skull cap of black silk, and a shabby frock-coat like Mr. Warr’s, approached Paul and announced himself as ‘the Father of the Chapel.’ He welcomed the young man with a curious formal courtesy, and aired scraps of Latin with which Paul was familiar from many years of study of the specimen-books of the type-founders, who used to exhibit the most exquisite specimens of the printers’ art in quotations from Cicero. Mr. Warr borrowed sixpence on the plea of sudden and severe internal pains, and went out to varnish the work of art. He returned with a moist eye, and in the course of the afternoon twice or thrice dipped his bulbous nose into the letter ‘e’ box, and snored for a minute at a time among the types.
Day followed day, and one day was like another. Saturday came, and Paul received his wages. He paid his first weekly bill at his boarding-house by aid of the remnant of the sovereign left for pocket-money. Next week saw him in debt. The third week saw him dinnerless. He knew the mistake his father had made, but it did not occur to him to take any active steps to remedy it Any lad of his years with a farthing’s-worth of business faculty would have written home to explain his case, and would have gone into cheaper lodgings. Paul chose to do nothing, but to wander hungrily and vacantly through the city in the dinner-hour. He found no more varnish for the work of art, and his working comrade was less amiable than he had been. The week’s end found him a little further in debt, in spite of abstention. His landlady, who thought he had been impertinent in that unconscious matter of the aspirate, was not disposed to be friendly.
‘I can tell by your looks,’ she said, ‘that you have been dissipating, and I know that you are wasting your money. I shall write and tell your father so.’
‘Very well,’ said Paul.
He was voracious at the supper-table, and that made the landlady no kinder to him. He ate like a wolf at every meal on Sunday, and his fellow-boarders chaffed him; but the lady of the house looked as if she would fain have poisoned him.
She asked Paul into her private sitting-room after supper, and he accepted her invitation.