The possessor of the strange name was a queer-looking man; there did not appear much glory about him. He was very tall, very lanky, and thin, his shoulders sloping downwards like a well-pointed pencil, while his face was solemn and elongated, like your own, reader, if you look at it in a spoon held lengthways.
The articles were signed, and Archie walked home on feathers apparently. He went upstairs singing. His landlady ran to the door.
"Work at last?"
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.