Paul went back to his case, and fell to work there, not caring to speculate much as to what had happened. The Father of the Chapel, accompanied by two or three of his companions, left the composing-room, were absent for some twenty minutes, and then filed solemnly back again. Shortly afterwards a clerk came in, with a pen behind his ear. He stood by Paul’s side, and pronounced his name in a tone of question.
‘Here,’ said Paul, looking round at him.
‘Just give your hands a bit of a rinse,’ said the clerk, ‘and put on your things and come down into the manager’s office, will you?’
Paul nodded, and went off to the sink and the jack-towel, wondering a little. When in due time he presented himself before the manager he was at once enlightened.
‘That is your week’s money, Armstrong, and your services will not be required here further.’
‘Why not?’ Paul asked.
‘No fault of yours,’ the manager answered; ‘but we find that you have not been regularly apprenticed to the trade. This is a Union house, and we are under Union rules.’ Paul took up the half-sovereign and the small mound of silver the manager pushed towards him, and dropped it into his pocket coin by coin. ‘I don’t know your circumstances,’ the manager continued, ‘but if you’re in want of work, I can put you in the way of it at once. There’s a non-Union house close by, where I happen to know they’re short of hands. I have written the address in case you care to try there. You needn’t make it known to any of our men that I sent you there. Good-morning.’
‘I’m not going home,’ said Paul to himself, as he walked into the street ‘I’m not going home, whatever happens.’
He consulted the address he held in his hand, and walked towards it. His dinnerless wanderings of last week had taught him something of the intricacies of the City, if not much, and he chanced to know his way. The place he sought was high up at the top of a ramshackle old house in a narrow court, and a score of dispirited-looking men and youths were at work there. A tired dyspeptic, with a dusty patch of hair and rabbit teeth, approached him when he entered.
‘Yes,’ he said, when Paul had explained his business; ‘you can start in at once, and if you’re any good you’re safe for a month or two. I hope you’re a steady worker,’ he went on despondingly, as if he were quite hopeless. ‘They’re not a dependable lot here—not a dependable lot at all.’