“You’ve got men enough now?” he asked.
The other looked doubtful: “H’m; it’s a near thing, especially as we’ve got to be finished by midnight! I’ve had to enlist casual labour—chaps that were getting ready for a night under the trees. There’s nothing wrong about that, I suppose?”
“Let me have a look at them!”
A second or two later the ganger who had enlisted Fandor came up to the journalist, who was working away very hard and conscientiously, all alone, away from the other roadmen. He stared at him for a minute without a word.
“You don’t know how to work, my man,
” he said at last, “it’s not worth twopence, what you’re doing!”
“But, sir,” protested Fandor, very much surprised; “I’m doing my best.”
“Well, then, your best’s not good enough; you’re not getting on!” Then, as if coming to a sudden decision:
“No, you’re no good at all and now the chief has been jawing me for taking on outsiders. Here, here’s forty sous; clear out!”
There was nothing to be said; moreover, the instant he had fingered his forty sous, a fortune in his present plight, Fandor lost all interest in the work on hand, good, bad or indifferent.