Archie nodded and smiled.
When Sarah came in with the dinner things she danced across the room, bobbing her queer, old-fashioned face and crying—
“Lawk-a-daisy, diddle-um-doo, Missus says you’ve got work to do!”
“Yes, Sarah, at long last, and I’m so happy.”
“’Appy, indeed!” sang Sarah. “Why, ye won’t be the gent no longer!”
Archie certainly had got work to do. For a time his employer kept him in the shop. There was only one other lad, and he went home with the physic, and what with studying hard to make himself au fait in prescribing and selling seidlitz powders and gum drops, Archie was pretty busy.
So months flew by. Then his long-faced employer took him into the back premises, and proceeded to initiate him into the mysteries of the something else that was to make a man of him.
“There’s a fortune in it,” said Mr Glorie, pointing to a bubbling grease-pot. “Yes, young sir, a vast fortune.”
“What is the speciality?” Archie ventured to enquire.
“The speciality, young sir?” replied Mr Glorie, his face relaxing into something as near a smile as it would permit of. “The speciality, sir, is soap. A transparent soap. A soap, young sir, that is destined to revolutionise the world of commerce, and bring my star to the ascendant after struggling for two long decades with the dark clouds of adversity.”