Finally after asking a number of questions, to all of which I had the answers pat, Eddie engaged me. I followed him to an upper floor, hard put to it to keep from grinning at the idea of my boy showing me the way around the place. Fortunately the spectacles I wear help me to preserve an owl-like gravity.
He took me to Ashley, the foreman of the gem-setting department. Ashley has been with us forty years. He is a surly, lovable old crab. It was under Ashley that I got my training in handicraft twenty-five years ago. Ashley regarded me with no favourable eye, but bowed to the mandate of the head of the firm, of course. He gave me a boy's work cleaning old settings, and kept a sharp watch on me. Later I succeeded in mollifying him a little by showing a certificate of good standing in the English jewellers' union, and by asking the name of the local secretary so that I could apply for membership here.
He has not forgiven me, though, for being put in over the youngsters' heads. "A blank-blank furriner!" his irascible eye seems to say. I thought I had taken the measure of the old man's irascibility, having worked under him. And in late years I would have said: "Here is one man in my shop who is not afraid to speak his mind to me." But Eddie had not been gone five minutes before I found that Ashley had never spoken all of his mind to me. I found, too, that his irascibility had been tempered to the boss's son. The boss himself, masquerading as a meek, alien workman, now received the full benefit of it.
I am glad I made the resolution before coming here not to let anything I might learn on the inside, apart from actual dishonesty, influence me in dealing with my men later. Already I confess my patience has been tried. I thought I was a radical myself, but I find I am way behind the times. There is one young fellow, Mullen by name, a hothead, a socialist, who exasperates me every time he opens his mouth. He is so sure that his crazy ideas are right! Yet he is none the worse workman for that. He and old Ashley are the leaders of the two elements in the shop, and I'm sorry to say the old man generally comes off second best in their verbal encounters.
During one of their arguments the first day, I was much amused, and a little alarmed, when the talk turned on me.
"You with your socialist talk!" cried Ashley to Mullen scornfully. "A man would think every boss was a horned devil! There's our old man now, what's the matter with him?"
"I don't know him," said Mullen with a leer. "We ain't on visiting terms."
"He talks to us, simple and friendly, just like one of ourselves," said Ashley.
"Sure!" cried Mullen. "It don't cost him nothin'! I ain't seen him give up nothin' but talk, though. That's what he keeps you quiet with, a little soft talk like strokin' the dog!"
"He don't set up to be no more than a man like myself!" said my defender.