“Ah,” said the boy, acutely, “supposed not.”
“Reckon you’ll be the next one we shall hear of getting engaged.”
“Many a true word spoke in jest,” said the boy. “And you think,” turning with seriousness to the Coastguard, “you think I can’t do better than go in for learning that?”
Therefore to the engineer’s shop went Bobbie, because the Coastguard had pointed out to him that some of the knowledge to be gained there could not fail some day to be valuable. Not that he intended to become an engineer. Decision as to his first occupation on leaving the Home had already been taken, being preserved as a secret which he proposed not to disclose until the appropriate moment came. At the tables in the engineer’s shop he worked, and learned under direction, after some failures, how to use a lathe without pinching his fingers. The lads worked in extra garments of aprons and paper caps; their task made them so grimy that they felt sure no one could tell them from adults; the wash that came after a day in the workshop seemed to put them back ten years. An increased feeling of maturity came to Bobbie when, on being selected to play “The Lost Chord,” as a cornet solo at a concert in the neighbourhood which the Home’s band attended, a local paper called him by a fascinating misprint Mister Robert Lancaster, intending to say Master, but allowing the i’s to have it. He walked rigidly upright for several weeks after this and spoke to no boy under the age of thirteen.
“You fancy yourself,” remarked sarcastically the boys whom he ignored.
“I do,” he replied, frankly.
It became his keen endeavour at this period to reach at least four feet six in height. He had special reasons for this ambition, and days occurred when, in his impatience, he measured himself three times during the twenty-four hours. The last inch seemed as though it would never arrive; other lads in the engineer’s shop, to encourage him, expressed the cheerful opinion that he had stopped growing. Finding in a newspaper an advertisement specially addressed “To the Short,” he wrote privately to Trixie Bell to obtain for him the golden remedy that the advertisers promised to send on receipt of two shillings and ninepence, and when Trixie, glad of an opportunity for being useful, obeyed, sending him the result as a birthday present, “With kind regards,” Bobbie found that the remedy was but a pair of thick list soles to be worn inside the boots; he perceived hopelessly that nothing could be done to encourage Nature. The last pencil mark on the wall of his dormitory denoting his height remained as a record for months; depression enveloped him when he gazed at it. But there came a spring season when he found to his intense delight that he had, within a brief period, not only shot up to the necessary inches, but just beyond them, and the mother of Collingwood Cottage had to lengthen the arms of his jackets and the legs of his trousers. On being measured anew in the tailor’s shop, he laughed with sheer delight.
The day of all days came.
“Father wants to see you, Lancaster,” announced one of the other lads.