Naughty boy!"
He discovered that Bell had dressed up the bolster in his evening clothes.
The boy was delighted with his joke.
"You must wear them at the social evening, Clarence."
"He'll catch the belle of Lynn's, if he's not careful."
Philip had already heard of the social evenings, for the money stopped from the wages to pay for them was one of the grievances of the staff.
It was only two shillings a month, and it covered medical attendance and the use of a library of worn novels; but as four shillings a month besides was stopped for washing, Philip discovered that a quarter of his six shillings a week would never be paid to him.
Most of the men were eating thick slices of fat bacon between a roll of bread cut in two.
These sandwiches, the assistants' usual supper, were supplied by a small shop a few doors off at twopence each.
The soldier rolled in; silently, rapidly, took off his clothes and threw himself into bed.
At ten minutes past eleven the gas gave a big jump and five minutes later went out.
The soldier went to sleep, but the others crowded round the big window in their pyjamas and night-shirts and, throwing remains of their sandwiches at the women who passed in the street below, shouted to them facetious remarks.
The house opposite, six storeys high, was a workshop for Jewish tailors who left off work at eleven; the rooms were brightly lit and there were no blinds to the windows.
The sweater's daughter—the family consisted of father, mother, two small boys, and a girl of twenty—went round the house to put out the lights when work was over, and sometimes she allowed herself to be made love to by one of the tailors.
The shop assistants in Philip's room got a lot of amusement out of watching the manoeuvres of one man or another to stay behind, and they made small bets on which would succeed.
At midnight the people were turned out of the Harrington Arms at the end of the street, and soon after they all went to bed: Bell, who slept nearest the door, made his way across the room by jumping from bed to bed, and even when he got to his own would not stop talking.
At last everything was silent but for the steady snoring of the soldier, and Philip went to sleep.
He was awaked at seven by the loud ringing of a bell, and by a quarter to eight they were all dressed and hurrying downstairs in their stockinged feet to pick out their boots.
They laced them as they ran along to the shop in Oxford Street for breakfast.
If they were a minute later than eight they got none, nor, once in, were they allowed out to get themselves anything to eat.
Sometimes, if they knew they could not get into the building in time, they stopped at the little shop near their quarters and bought a couple of buns; but this cost money, and most went without food till dinner.
Philip ate some bread and butter, drank a cup of tea, and at half past eight began his day's work again.
"First to the right.
Second on the left, madam."
Soon he began to answer the questions quite mechanically.
The work was monotonous and very tiring.
After a few days his feet hurt him so that he could hardly stand: the thick soft carpets made them burn, and at night his socks were painful to remove.
It was a common complaint, and his fellow 'floormen' told him that socks and boots just rotted away from the continual sweating.
All the men in his room suffered in the same fashion, and they relieved the pain by sleeping with their feet outside the bed-clothes.
At first Philip could not walk at all and was obliged to spend a good many of his evenings in the sitting-room at Harrington Street with his feet in a pail of cold water.
His companion on these occasions was Bell, the lad in the haberdashery, who stayed in often to arrange the stamps he collected.
As he fastened them with little pieces of stamp-paper he whistled monotonously.
CIV
The social evenings took place on alternate Mondays.
There was one at the beginning of Philip's second week at Lynn's.
He arranged to go with one of the women in his department.
"Meet 'em 'alf-way," she said, "same as I do."
This was Mrs. Hodges, a little woman of five-and-forty, with badly dyed hair; she had a yellow face with a network of small red veins all over it, and yellow whites to her pale blue eyes.
She took a fancy to Philip and called him by his Christian name before he had been in the shop a week.
"We've both known what it is to come down," she said.
She told Philip that her real name was not Hodges, but she always referred to "me 'usband Misterodges;" he was a barrister and he treated her simply shocking, so she left him as she preferred to be independent like; but she had known what it was to drive in her own carriage, dear—she called everyone dear—and they always had late dinner at home.
She used to pick her teeth with the pin of an enormous silver brooch.
It was in the form of a whip and a hunting-crop crossed, with two spurs in the middle.
Philip was ill at ease in his new surroundings, and the girls in the shop called him 'sidey.'
One addressed him as Phil, and he did not answer because he had not the least idea that she was speaking to him; so she tossed her head, saying he was a 'stuck-up thing,' and next time with ironical emphasis called him Mister Carey.
She was a Miss Jewell, and she was going to marry a doctor.
The other girls had never seen him, but they said he must be a gentleman as he gave her such lovely presents.
"Never you mind what they say, dear," said Mrs. Hodges. "I've 'ad to go through it same as you 'ave.
They don't know any better, poor things.
You take my word for it, they'll like you all right if you 'old your own same as I 'ave."