It was a good custom of the firm to award a gold watch to every pupil who ended his term without being late once. That morning Tom’s clock had failed to ring its alarm at the usual time, so despite every endeavour the boy could not reach the gates before ten minutes past six. He might, by losing the whole day and making some excuse, have escaped penalty: instead, he waited outside the gates until eight o’clock and went in to work at the breakfast hour.
One other story relating to this period is told by his mother. It too reveals distinctive points of character.
On an occasion Tom, with several fellow-pupils, went on a walking tour during the Easter holidays over the Ards peninsula. Crossing Strangford Lough at Portaferry, they visited St. John’s Point, the most easterly part of Ireland; then, finding the tide favourable, crossed the sands from Ballykinler to Dundrum—Tom carrying the youngest of the party on his back through a deep intervening stretch of water—and thence, by way of Newcastle, proceeded across the mountains to Rostrevor.
In their hotel at Rostrevor the boys, during an excess of high spirits, broke the rail of a bedstead; whereupon Tom, assuming responsibility, told the landlady that he would bear the expense of repairing the break. She answered that in her hotel they did not keep patched beds, consequently would be troubling him for the cost of a new one.
“If so, the old one belongs to me,” said Tom.
“Provided you’ll be taking it away,” countered the dame.
The boy argued no further, but finding presently, through a friendly chambermaid, an old charwoman who said her sick husband would rejoice in the luxury of the bedstead, he offered to mend it and give it to her.
“Ah, but wouldn’t it be more than my place is worth, child dear,” she answered, “for the like of me to be taking it from the hotel.”
“Never mind that,” said Tom. “Give me your address, borrow a screw driver, and I’ll see to it.”
So he and his companions, having roughly repaired the rail, took the bedstead to pieces, and, applauded by the visitors, carried it to the street. A good-natured tram conductor allowed them to load their burden on an end of his car. Soon they reached the woman’s home, bore in the bedstead, set it up in the humble room, raised the old man and his straw mattress upon it from the floor, made him comfortable, and dowered with all the blessings the old couple could invoke upon them, went away happy.