Wire Bonding In Microelectronics 3e 3rd Edition

George Harman download

https://ebookbell.com/product/wire-bonding-in-
microelectronics-3e-3rd-edition-george-harman-1443000

Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com

Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be
interested in. You can click the link to download.

Copper Wire Bonding 1st Edition Preeti S Chauhan Anupam Choubey

https://ebookbell.com/product/copper-wire-bonding-1st-edition-preeti-
s-chauhan-anupam-choubey-4344238

Manual Of Wire Bending Techniques 1 Spi Elichiro Nakajima

https://ebookbell.com/product/manual-of-wire-bending-techniques-1-spi-
elichiro-nakajima-4588172

Freeuse Team Bonding With Lyssa A Hotwife Wife Sharing Romantic

Erotica Rose

https://ebookbell.com/product/freeuse-team-bonding-with-lyssa-a-
hotwife-wife-sharing-romantic-erotica-rose-230166894

Wire Jewelry Beaded And Beautiful 70 Captivating Jewelry Designs Irina

Miech

https://ebookbell.com/product/wire-jewelry-beaded-and-
beautiful-70-captivating-jewelry-designs-irina-miech-46774394
Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing Fundamental Sciences And Advances
Sandeep Rathee

https://ebookbell.com/product/wire-arc-additive-manufacturing-
fundamental-sciences-and-advances-sandeep-rathee-54299560

Wire Bead Celtic Jewelry 35 Quick And Stylish Projects Linda Jones

https://ebookbell.com/product/wire-bead-celtic-jewelry-35-quick-and-
stylish-projects-linda-jones-2172832

Wire Technology Process Engineering And Metallurgy 1st Edition Roger N

Wright

https://ebookbell.com/product/wire-technology-process-engineering-and-
metallurgy-1st-edition-roger-n-wright-2322080

Wire Jewelry Workshop Techniques For Working With Wire And Beads Susan
Ray

https://ebookbell.com/product/wire-jewelry-workshop-techniques-for-
working-with-wire-and-beads-susan-ray-4430072

Wire Art Jewelry Workshop Stepbystep Techniques And Projects Papdvd

Sharilyn Miller

https://ebookbell.com/product/wire-art-jewelry-workshop-stepbystep-
techniques-and-projects-papdvd-sharilyn-miller-4444262
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
“Two shillin’. Orrigh’,” and instantly what remained of the new
customer’s week’s wages was scattered about the counter. Mrs. May
took two shillings and returned the rest; which with some difficulty
was thrust back into the pocket. And the new customer, after
looking narrowly about him in search of his purchase, and at last
discovering it under his arm, sallied forth with a wipe against the
other door-post, and continued his winding way: a solemn and
portentous bricklayer, with red paint on his shoulders and whiskers,
and a bladder of lard that slipped sometimes forward and sometimes
backward from his embrace, and was a deal of trouble to pick up
again.
Here was a profit of sixpence at a stroke, unlikely as the chance was
to recur; and it raised Nan’s spirits, unreasonably enough. Still, the
bricklayer brought luck of a sort. For there were three more
customers within the next hour, two bringing a halfpenny and one a
penny. And in the evening five or six came, one spending as much
as fourpence. This was better, perhaps, but poor enough. At ten
that night Nan May reckoned her profit for the day at ninepence
farthing, including the bricklayer’s sixpence; and she was sick with
waiting and faint with fear. At half-past ten Uncle Isaac turned up.
“Ah hum,” he said; “bin paintin’. Might ’a’ laid it on a bit evener.
There’s right ways o’ layin’ on paint, an’ there’s wrong ways, an’ one
way ain’t the same as the other.” He raised his finger at Johnny
instructively. “Far from it and contrairy, there’s a great difference.”
Uncle Isaac paused, and no further amplification of his proposition
occurring to him, he turned to Mrs. May. “’Ow’s trade?” he asked.
Nan May shook her head sadly. “Very bad, uncle,” she said. “Hardly
any at all.” And she felt nearer crying than ever since the funeral.
“Ah,” said Uncle Isaac, sitting on a packing case—empty, but
intended to look full; “ah, what you want’s Enterprise. Enterprise;
that’s what you want. What is it as stimilates trade an’ encourages
prosperity to—to the latest improvements? Enterprise. Why is
commercial opulentness took—at least, wafted—commercial
opulentness wafted round the ’ole world consekince o’ what?
Consekince o’ Enterprise.” Uncle Isaac tapped the counter with his
forefinger and gazed solemnly in Nan May’s troubled face.
“Consekince o’ Enterprise,” he repeated slowly, with another tap.
Then he added briskly, with a glance at the inner door: “’Adjer
supper?”
“No, uncle,” Nan answered. “I never thought of it. But, now you’re
here, p’raps you’ll have a bit with us?”
“Ah—don’t mind if I do,” Uncle Isaac responded cheerfully. “That
looks a nice little bit o’ bacon. Now a rasher auf that, an’ a hegg—
got a hegg? O yus.” He saw a dozen in a basin. “A rasher auf that,
an’ a hegg or two, ’ud be just the thing, with a drop o’ beer, wouldn’t
it?”
Johnny fetched the beer, and Uncle Isaac had two rashers and four
eggs; and he finished with a good solid piece of bread, and the first
slice—a large one—out of the Dutch cheese from the counter. Nan
May made no more than a pretence at eating a little bread and
cheese.
When at last the jug was empty, and Uncle Isaac was full, he leaned
back in his chair, and for some minutes exercised his lips in strange
workings and twistings, with many incidental clicks and sucks and
fizzes, while he benignantly contemplated the angle of the ceiling.
When at last the display flagged, he brought his gaze gradually
lower, till it rested on the diminished piece of bacon. “None so bad,
that bacon,” he observed, putting his head aside with a critical
regard. “Though p’raps rayther more of a breakfast specie than a
supper.” He laid his head to the other side, as one anxious to be
impartial. “Yus,” he went on thoughtfully, “more of a breakfast
specie, as you might say.” Then after a pause, he added, with the
air of one announcing a brilliant notion:—“I b’lieve—yus, I do b’lieve
I’ll try a bit for breakfast to-morrer mornin’!”
“If you like, uncle,” Nan answered, a little faintly. “But—but-” timidly
—“I was thinking p’raps it’ll make it look rather small to—to put on
the counter.”
“So it would—so it would,” Uncle Isaac admitted frankly; and indeed
the remaining piece was scarce of four rashers’ capacity. “Pity to cut
it, as you say, Nan. Thanks—I’ll just wrop it up as it is. It’ll come in
for Monday too; an’ that large bit o’ streaky’ll look a deal more
nobler on the counter.”
Uncle Isaac’s visit swept away the day’s profits and a trifle more.
But certainly, Uncle Isaac must not be offended now that things
looked so gloomy ahead.
Bessy lay, and strained her wits far into the night, inventing
comfortable theories and assurances, and exchanging them with her
mother for others as hopeful. But in the morning each pillow had its
wet spot.
 XII.

But Monday saw another beginning. Johnny must rise soon after
five now, to reach his work at six; but on this, the first morning, he
was awake and eager at half-past four. Early as he was, his mother
was before him, and as he pulled his new white ducks over his
every-day clothes he could hear her moving below. Nan May was
resolved that the boy should go out to begin the world fed and warm
at least, and as cheerful as might be.
For this one morning Johnny felt nothing of the sleepy discomfort of
any house in pitch dark a little before five. Two breakfasts were
ready for him, one for the present moment (which he scarce
touched, for he was excited), and another in a basin and a red
handkerchief, for use at the workshop, with a new tin can full of
coffee. For the half-hour allowed for breakfast would scarce suffice
for the mere hurrying home and hurrying back again; and the full
hour at midday would give him bare time for dinner with his mother.
Bessy was infected with the excitement, and stumped downstairs to
honour Johnny’s setting out. He left the shop-door half an hour too
soon, with a boot flung after him. The darkness of the street
seemed more solid at this hour than ever at midnight, and it almost
smothered the faint gas-lights. Now and again a touch of sleet
came down the wind, and a little dirty, half-melted snow of
yesterday made the ways sloppy. Nobody was about, to view the
manly glory of Johnny’s white ducks, and he was not sorry now that
his overcoat largely hid them, for the wind was cold. And he
reflected with satisfaction that the warming of his coffee on a
furnace would smoke the inglorious newness off the tin can ere he
carried it home in the open day.
The one or two policemen he met regarded him curiously, for
workmen were not yet moving. But the coffee-stall was open by the
swing bridge, and here the wind came over the river with an added
chill. The coffee-stall keeper had no customers, and on the bridge
and in the straight street beyond it nobody was in sight. Till
presently a small figure showed indistinctly ahead, and crossed the
road as though to avoid him. It moved hurriedly, keeping timidly to
the wall, and Johnny saw it was a girl of something near his own
age. He tramped on, and the girl, once past, seemed to gather
courage, turned, and made a few steps after him. At this he
stopped, and she spoke from a few yards off. She was a decently-
dressed and rather a pretty girl, as he could see by the bad light of
the nearest lamp, but her face was drawn with alarm, and her eyes
were wet.
“Please have you seen a lady anywhere?” she asked tremulously.
“Ill?”
Johnny had seen no lady, ill or well, and when he said no, the young
girl, with a weak “Thank-you,” hastened on her way. It was very
odd, thought Johnny, as he stared into the dark where she
vanished. Who should lose a lady—ill—in Blackwall streets at this
time of a pitch dark morning? As he thought, there rose in his mind
the picture of gran’dad, straying and bloody and sick to death, that
night that seemed so far away, though it was but a month or two
since. Maybe the lady had wandered from her bed in some such
plight as that. Johnny was sorry for the girl’s trouble, and would
have liked to turn aside and join in her search; but this was the hour
of great business of his own, and he went his way about it.
The policemen were knocking at doors now, rousing workmen, who
answered with shouts from within. An old night-watchman, too,
scurrying his hardest (for he had farther to go than the policemen),
banged impatiently at the knockers of the more conservative and
old-fashioned. And as Johnny neared Maidment and Hurst’s, the
streets grew busy with the earliest workmen—those who lived
farthest from their labour.
Maidment and Hurst’s gate was shut fast; he was far too soon. He
tried the little door that was cut in the great gate, but that was
locked. He wondered if he ought to knock; and did venture on a
faint tap of the knuckles. But he might as well have tapped the brick
wall. Moreover, a passing apprentice observed the act, and
guffawed aloud. “Try down the airey, mate,” was his advice.
So Johnny stood and waited, keeping the new tin can where the
gaslight over the gate should not betray its unsmoked brightness,
and trying to look as much like an old hand as possible. But the
passing men grinned at each other, jerking their heads toward him,
and Johnny felt that somehow he was known for a greenhorn. The
apprentices, immeasurable weeks ahead of him in experience, flung
ironic advice and congratulation. “Hooray! Extry quarter for you,
mate!” two or three said; one earnestly advising him to “chalk it on
the gaffer’s ’at, so’s ’e won’t forget.” And still another shouted in
tones of extravagant indignation:—“What? On’y jes’ come? They
bin a-waitin’ for ye ever since the pubs shut!”
At length the timekeeper came, sour and grey, and tugged at a
vertical iron bell-handle which Johnny had not perceived. The bell
brought the night-watchman, with a lantern and a clank of keys, and
the timekeeper stepped through the little door with a growl in
acknowledgment. He left the door ajar, and Johnny, after a
moment’s hesitation, stepped in after him.
“Mr. Cottam told me to come this morning, sir,” he said, before the
timekeeper had quite disappeared into his box. “My name’s May.”
The timekeeper turned and growled again, that being his usual
manner of conversation. “Awright,” he continued. “You wait there
till ’e comes in then.” And it was many months ere Johnny next
heard him say so much at once.
The timekeeper began hanging round metal tickets on a great board
studded with hooks, a ticket to each hook, in numbered order.
Presently a man came in at the door, selected a ticket from the
board, and dropped it through a slot into what seemed to be a big
money-box. Then three came together, and each did the same.
Then there came a stream of men and boys, and the board grew
barer of tickets and barer. In the midst came Mr. Cottam, suddenly
appearing within the impossibly small wicket as by a conjuring trick.
He tramped heavily straight ahead, apparently unconscious of
Johnny. But as he came by he dropped his hand on the boy’s
shoulder, and, gazing steadily ahead: “Well, me lad!” he roared,
much as though addressing somebody at a window of the factory
across the yard.
“Good-morning, sir,” Johnny answered, walking at the foreman’s side
by compulsion; for the hand, however friendly, was the heaviest and
strongest he had ever felt.
Mr. Cottam went several yards in silence, still gripping Johnny’s
shoulder. Then he spoke again. “Mother all right?” he asked
fiercely, still addressing the window.
“Yes, sir, thank-you.”
They walked on, and entered the factory. “This ’ere,” said Mr.
Cottam, turning on Johnny at last and glaring at him sternly: “this
’ere’s the big shop. ’Eavy work. There’s a big cylinder for the noo
Red Star boat.” He led his prisoner through the big shop, this way
and that among the great lathes and planers, lit by gas from the
rafters; and up a staircase to another workshop. “’Ere we are,” said
Mr. Cottam, releasing Johnny’s shoulder at last. “Y’ain’t a fool, are
ye? Know what a lathe is, doncher, an’ beltin’, an’ shaftin’?
Awright. Needn’t do nothin’ ’fore breakfast. Look about an’ see
things, an’ don’t get in mischief. I got me eye on ye.”
The foreman left him, and began to walk along the lines of
machines; and the nearest apprentice grinned at Johnny, and
winked. Johnny looked about, as the foreman had advised. This
place, where he was to learn to make engines, and where he was to
work day by day till he was twenty-one, and a man, was a vast room
with skylights in the roof: though this latter circumstance he did not
notice till after breakfast, when the gas was turned off, and daylight
penetrated from above. A confusion of heavy raftering stretched
below the roof, carrying belted shafting everywhere; and every man
bent over his machine or his bench, for Cottam was a sharp gaffer.
Johnny watched the leading hand scribing curves on metal along
lines already set out by punctured dots. “Lining off,” said the leading
hand, seeing the boy’s interest. And then, leaning over to speak,
because of the workshop din: “Centre-dabs,” he added, pointing to
the dots. That, at least, Johnny resolved not to forget: lining off and
centre-dabs.
For some reason—perhaps the usual reason, perhaps another—three
or four of the men were “losing a quarter” that Monday morning,
and some of them were men with whom young apprentices had
been working. Consequently, Cottam, in addition to his general
supervision, had to keep particular watch on these mentorless lads,
and Johnny learned a little from the gaffer’s remarks.
“Well, wotjer doin’ with that file?” he would ask of one. “You ain’t a-
playin’ cat’s cradle now, me lad! Look ’ere, keep ’er level, like this!
It’s a file, it ain’t a rockin’-’orse!”
Or he would come behind another who was chipping bye-metal, and
using a hammer with more zeal than skill. He would watch for a
moment, and then break out, “Well, you are fond o’ exercise, I must
say! Good job you’re strong enough to stand it. I ain’t. My
constitootion won’t allow me to ’old a ’ammer like this ’ere.” This
with a burlesque of the lad’s stiff grasp and whole-arm action. “It
’ud knock me up. Bein’ a more delicate sort o’ person” (his arm was
near as thick as the boy’s waist) “I ’old a ’ammer like this—see!”
And he took the shaft end loosely in his fingers and hammered
steadily and firmly from the wrist. Johnny saw that and
remembered.
Again, half an hour later, stopping at the elbow of another
apprentice, a little older than the last: “Come,” said the foreman,
“that’s a noo idea, that is! Takin’ auf the skin from cast iron with a
bran’ noo file! I ’ope you’ve patented it. An’ I ’ope you won’t come
an’ want another file in about ’alf an hour, ’cos if you do you won’t
git it!” Whereat Johnny, astonished to learn that cast iron had a
skin, resolved not to forget that you shouldn’t take it off with a new
file, and made a mental note to ask somebody why.
Presently, as he came by the long fitting-bench, Johnny grew aware
of a fitter, immensely tall and very thin, who grinned and nodded in
furtive recognition. It was, indeed, the next door lodger, who had
painted the cornice. He was very large, Johnny thought, to be so
shy; he positively blushed as he grinned. “You come to this shop?”
he asked in his odd whisper, as he stooped to judge the fit of his
work. “I’m beddin’ down a junk ring; p’raps the gaffer’ll put you to
’elp me after breakfast.”
Bedding down a junk ring sounded advanced and technical, and
Johnny felt taller at the prospect. He would learn what a junk ring
was, probably, when he had to help bed it down. Meanwhile he
watched the tall man, as he brought the metal to an exact face.
“Stop in to breakfast?” the man asked, as he stooped again.
“Yes.”
“Some o’ the boys ’ll try a game with ye, p’raps. Don’t mind a little
game, do ye?”
“No.”
“Ah, I couldn’t stand it when I was a lad. Made me mis’rable. When
ye go in the smiths’ shop to git yer breakfast, look about ye, if
they’re special kind findin’ y’ a seat. Up above, f’r instance.”
Johnny left the long man, and presently observed that the foreman
was not in the shop. There was an instant slackness perceivable
among the younger and less steady men, for the leading hand had
no such authority as Cottam. One man at a lathe, throwing out his
gear examined his work, and, turning to Johnny, said, “Look ’ere, me
lad; I want to true this ’ere bit. Jes’ you go an’ ask Sam Wilkins—
that man up at the end there, in the serge jacket—jes’ you go an’
ask ’im for the round square.”
Johnny knew the tool called a square, used for testing the truth of
finished work, though he had never seen a round one. Howbeit he
went off with alacrity: but it seemed that Sam Wilkins hadn’t the
round square. It was Joe Mills, over in the far corner. So he tried
Joe Mills; but he, it seemed, had just lent it to Bob White, at the
biggest shaping-machine near the other end. Bob White understood
perfectly, but thought he had last seen the round square in the
possession of George Walker. Whereas George Walker was perfectly
certain that it had gone downstairs to Bill Cook in the big shop.
Doubting nothing from the uncommonly solemn faces of Sam and
Joe and Bob and George, Johnny set off down the stone stairs,
where he met the ascending gaffer, on his way back from the
pattern-maker’s shop.
“’Ullo boy,” he said, “where you goin’?”
“Downstairs, sir, for the round square.”
Mr. Cottam’s eyes grew more prominent, and there were certain
sounds, as of an imprisoned bull-frog, from somewhere deep in his
throat. But his expression relaxed not a shade. Presently he said,
“Know what a round is?”
“Yes sir.”
“Know what a square is?”
“Yes sir.”
“S’pose somebody wanted a round square drored on paper, what ’ud
ye do?”
There was another internal croak, and somehow Johnny felt
emboldened. “I think,” he said, with some sly hesitation, “I think I’d
tell ’em to do it themselves.”
Mr. Cottam croaked again, louder, and this time with a heave of the
chest. “Awright,” he said, “that’s good enough. Better say
somethink like that to them as sent ye. That’s a very old ’ave, that
is.”
He resumed his heavy progress up the stairs, turning Johnny round
by the shoulder, and sending him in front. There were furtive grins
in the shop, and one lad asked “Got it?” in a voice cautiously
subdued. But just then the bell rang for breakfast.
Most of the men and several of the boys made their best pace for
the gate. These either lived near, or got their breakfasts at coffee-
shops, and their half-hour began and ended in haste. The few
others, more leisurely, stayed to gather their cans and handkerchiefs
—some to wipe their hands on cotton waste, that curious tangled
stuff by which alone Johnny remembered his father. As for him, he
waited to do what the rest did, for he saw that his friend, the long
man, had gone out with the patrons of coffee-shops. The boys took
their cans and clattered down to the smiths’ shop, Johnny well in the
rear, for he was desirous of judging from a safe distance, what form
the “little game” might take, that the long man had warned him of,
in case it came soon. But a wayward fate preserved him from
booby-traps that morning.
In the first place, he had come in a cap, and so forfended one
ordeal. For it was the etiquette of the shop among apprentices that
any bowler hat brought in on the head of a new lad must be pinned
to the wall with the tangs of many files; since a bowler hat, ere a lad
had four years at least of service, was a pretension, a vainglory, and
an outrage. Next, his lagging saved his new ducks. The first lads
down had prepared the customary trap, which consisted of a seat of
honour in the best place near the fire; a seat doctored with a pool of
oil, and situated exactly beneath a rafter on which stood a can of
water taken from a lathe; a string depending from the can, with its
lower end fastened behind the seat. So that the victim accepting
the accommodation would receive a large oily embellishment on his
new white ducks, and, by the impact of his back against the string,
induce a copious christening of himself and his entire outfit. But it
chanced that an elderly journeyman from the big shop—old Ben
Cutts—appeared on the scene early, wiping his spectacles on his
jacket lining as he came. He knew nothing of a fresh ’prentice, saw
nothing but a convenient and warm seat, and hastened to seize it.
The lads were taken by surprise. “No—not there!” shouted one a
few yards away.
“Fust come fust served, me lad,” chuckled old Ben Cutts, as he
dropped on the fatal spot. “’Ere I am, an’ ’ere I—”
With that the can fell, and Johnny at the door was astonished to
observe a grey-headed workman, with a pair of spectacles in his
hand and a vast oily patch on his white overalls, dripping and
dancing and swearing, and smacking wildly at the heads of the boys
about him, without hitting any.
There were no more tricks that breakfast-time. For when at length
old Ben subsided to his meal, he put a little pile of wedges by his
side, to fling at the first boy of whose behaviour he might
disapprove. And as his spectacles were now on his nose, and his
aim, thus aided, was known to be no bad one, and as the wedges,
furthermore, were both hard and heavy, breakfasts were eaten with
all the decorum possible in a smiths’ shop.
Johnny’s new can was satisfactorily blackened, and his breakfast was
well disposed of. Such youths as tried him with verbal chaff he
answered as well as he might, though he had as yet little of the
Cockney boy’s readiness. And at last the bell rang again, and the
breakfasters went back to work.
Mr. Cottam, casting his glance about the shop in search of the
simplest possible job for Johnny to begin on, with a steady man at
hand to watch him, stopped as his gaze reached Long Hicks, and
sent Johnny to help him with his bolts. And so Johnny found the tall
man’s surmise verified, and the tall man himself received him with
another grin a little less shy. He set him to running down bolts and
nuts, showing him how to fix the bolt in a vice and work the nut on
it with a spanner. Johnny fell to the task enthusiastically, and so the
morning went.
 XIII.

When Nan May opened shop, she saw that men were pulling down as
much of the ship-yard wall opposite as stood between two chalk
lines. She thought no more of the thing at the time, not guessing
how nearly it concerned her. For this was to be a new workmen’s
gate to the ship-yard and passing workmen might change the
fortunes of a shop. For that day, however, there was no sign but the
demand of a bricklayer’s labourer for a penn’orth of cheese.
It was as bad a day as Saturday, in the matter of trade—indeed
there was no drunken man to buy lard—and the woman’s heart grew
heavier as the empty hours went. Bessy stood at the back-parlour
door, pale and anxious, but striving to lift a brave face. Before one
o’clock there was dinner to be prepared; not that either Bessy or her
mother could eat, but for Johnny. And at a quarter past one both
met him at the door as cheerfully as they could; and indeed they
were eager to hear of his fortunes. They wondered to see him
coming with the long man who lived next door; and the long man,
for his part, was awkward and nervous when he saw them. At first
he hung back, as though to let Johnny go on alone; but he changed
his mind, and came striding ahead hastily, looking neither to right
nor to left, and plunged in at his door.
Johnny was hungry and in high spirits. He and Long Hicks, it
seemed, had been bedding down a junk ring for a piston, Johnny
easing the bolts and nuts, and Long Hicks doing the other work. He
said nothing of the round square, but talked greatly of slide-valves
and cranks, till Bessy judged him a full engineer already. Between
his mouthfuls he illustrated the proper handling of hammer and file,
and reprehended the sinful waste of spoiling the surface of a new
file on the outer skin of a fresh iron casting. It cheered Nan May to
see the boy taking so heartily to his work, through all her secret
dread that she might lack the means to keep him at it. Johnny
glanced anxiously at the clock from time to time, and at last
declared that he must knock for Long Hicks, who was plainly
forgetting how late it was. And in the end he rushed away to disturb
the tall man ten minutes too soon, and hurried off to Maidment and
Hurst’s, there to take his own new metal ticket from the great board,
and drop it duly into the box.
The afternoon went busily at the factory, and busy days followed.
Johnny acquired his first tool, a steel foot-rule, and carried it in
public places with a full quarter of its length visible at the top of its
appointed pocket. It was the way of all young apprentices to do
this; the rule, they would say, thus being carried convenient for the
hand. But it was an exact science among the observant to judge a
lad’s experience inversely by scale of the inches exposed, going at
the rate of half an inch a year. A lad through two years of his “time”
would show no more of his rule than two inches; by the end of four
years one of these inches would have vanished; as his twenty-first
birthday approached, the last inch shrank to a mere hint of bright
metal; and nobody ever saw the foot-rule of a full journeyman,
except he were using it.
Johnny’s christening, postponed by the accident of old Ben Cutts,
came when he was first put to a small lathe to try his hand at
turning bolts. For when, returning from breakfast, he belted his
lathe, he did not perceive that the water-can had been tied to the
belt; realising it, however, the next instant, when it flew over the
shafting and discharged the water on his head. Then he was free of
the shop; suffering no more than the rest from the workshop pranks
habitual among the younger lads, and joining in them: gammoning
newer lads than himself with demands for the round square, and
oppressing them with urgent messages to testy gaffers—that a
cockroach had got in the foo-foo valve, that the donkey-man wanted
an order for a new nosebag, and the like. Grew able, moreover, in
workshop policy, making good interest with the storekeeper, who
might sometimes oblige with the loan of a hammer. For a lost
hammer meant a fine of three-and-sixpence, and when yours was
stolen—everybody stole everybody else’s hammer—a borrowed one
would tide you over till you could steal another. Making friends, too,
with the tool-smith, at a slight expense in drinks; though able to
punish him also if necessary, by the secret bedevilment of his fire
with iron borings. Learned to manufacture an apparent water-crack
by way of excuse for a broken file—a water-crack made with a touch
of grease well squeezed between the broken ends. In short,
became an initiated ’prentice engineer. In the trade itself, moreover,
he was not slow, and Mr. Cottam had once mentioned him (though
Johnny did not know it) as “none so bad a boy; one as can work ’is
own ’ead.” Until his first enthusiasm had worn off, he never ceased
from questioning Long Hicks, in his hours of leisure, on matters
concerning steam-engines; so that the retiring Hicks grew almost
out of touch with the accordion that had been the solace of his
solitude. The tall man had never met quite so inquisitive an
apprentice; engineering was in the blood, he supposed. He had
guessed the boy’s mother an engineer’s wife when first Johnny came
to his bench, because of the extra button Nan May had been careful
to sew on his jacket cuff; a button used to tighten the sleeve, that it
might not catch the driver on a lathe.
It was early in Johnny’s experience—indeed he had been scarce a
fortnight at the engine-shop—when a man coming in from an
outdoor job just before dinner told Cottam the foreman, that an old
friend was awaiting him at the gate, looking for a job.
“An’ ’oo’s the ol’ friend?” asked Cottam, severely distrustful.
“Mr. ’Enery Butson, Esquire,” the man answered, with a grin.
“What? Butson?” the gaffer ejaculated, and his eyes grew rounder.
“Butson? Agen? I’d—damme, I’d as soon ’ave a brass monkey!”
And Mr. Cottam stumped indignantly up the shop.
“Sing’lar, that,” observed a labourer who was helping an erector with
a little yacht engine near Johnny’s bench. “Sing’lar like what I ’eard
the gaffer say at Lumley’s when Butson wanted a job there. ‘What?’
sez ’e. ‘Butson? Why, I’d rayther ’ave a chaney dawg auf my
gran’mother’s mantelpiece,’ ’e sez. ‘’E wouldn’t spile castin’s,’ ’e sez.”
There were grins between the men who heard, for it would seem
that Mr. Butson was not unknown among them. But when Johnny
told his mother at dinner, she thought the men rude and ignorant;
and she was especially surprised at Mr. Cottam.
For some little while Johnny wondered at the girl who was hunting
for a sick lady in the street on that dark Monday morning. He looked
out for her on his way to and from his work, resolved, if he met her,
to ask how the search had fared, and how the lady was. But he saw
nothing of her, and the thing began to drop from his mind. Till a
Saturday afternoon, when he went to see a new “ram” launched; for
half-way to the ship-yard he saw a pretty girl—and surely it was the
same. In no tears nor trouble now, indeed, but most disconcertingly
composed and dignified—yet surely the same. Johnny hesitated,
and stopped: and then most precipitately resumed his walk. For
truly this was a very awful young person, icily unconscious of him,
her casual glance flung serenely through his head and over it. . . .
Perhaps it wasn’t the same, after all; and if not—well it was lucky he
had said nothing. . . . Nevertheless his inner feeling was that he had
made no mistake; more, that the girl remembered him, but was
proud and would not own it. It didn’t matter, he said to himself. But
the afternoon went a little flat; the launch was less interesting than
one might have expected. There was a great iron hull, tricked out
with flags; and when men knocked away the dog-shores with
sledge-hammers, the ship slid away, cradle and all, into the water.
There wasn’t much in that. Of course, if you knocked away the dog-
shores, the ship was bound to slide: plainly enough. That wasn’t
very interesting. Johnny felt vaguely resentful of the proceedings. . .
. But still he wondered afresh at the lost lady who was ill out of
doors so early in the morning.
 XIV.

But this launch was when Johnny’s ’prentice teeth were cut: when
the running down of bolts and pins was beneath his notice, and he
could be trusted with work at a small nibbling machine; when he
had turned stop-valve spindles more than once, and felt secretly
confident of his ability to cut a screw.
Meantime history was making at the shop: very slowly at first, it is
true. The holly had been made the most of; but it seemed to attract
not at all. Penn’orths and ha’porths were most of the sales, and
even they were few. Nan May grew haggard and desperate. Uncle
Isaac had called once soon after the opening Saturday, but since had
been a stranger. He had said that he was about to change his
lodgings (he was a widower), but Nan knew nothing of his new
address. In truth, such was Uncle Isaac’s tenderness of heart, that
he disliked the sight or complaint of distress; and, in the manner of
many other people of similar tenderness, he betook himself as far as
possible from the scene thereof, and kept there.
It was within a few days of Christmas when things seemed
hopeless. Johnny, indeed, had never ceased to hope till now. He
had talked of the certainty of struggling on somehow till his wages
were enough for all; indeed, even the six shillings a week seemed
something considerable now, though he knew that the rent alone
came to ten. But even Johnny’s cheerfulness fell in face of the
intenser dejection, the more open tears, of his mother and sister, as
the days wore on. Long Hicks found him a quieter, less inquisitive
boy, and a duller help than at first; and dinner at home was a sad
make-believe. Each knew that the other two were contrasting the
coming Christmas with the last. Then, gran’dad was with them, hale
and merry; to look out of window was to look through a world of
frosty twigs to woody deeps where the deer waited, timid and
shadowy, for the crusts flung out afar for them from the garden.
Now . . . but there!
But it was just at this desperate time that a change came, as by
magic. The men who pulled down the wall at the opposite side of
the street gave place to others who built a mighty brick pier at each
side of the opening: a pier designed to carry its half of the new
gate. But ere the work was near complete, men and boys from the
yard found it a convenient place to slip out and in at, on breakfast-
time or dinner-time errands.
Now it chanced at the time that one of these men was in a domestic
difficulty; a difficulty that a large part of the eight or nine hundred
men of the ship-yard encountered in turn at more or less regular
intervals. His wife inhabited the bedroom in company with a
monthly nurse; while he roosted sleeplessly at night on a slippery
horsehair couch in the parlour, or wallowed in a jumble of spare
blankets and old coats on the floor; spending his home hours by day
in desolate muddling in the kitchen, lost and incapable, and abject
before the tyranny of the nurse. On dark mornings he made forlorn
attempts at raking together a breakfast to carry with him to work;
but as he had taken no thought to put anything into the cupboard
over night, he found it no easy matter to extract a breakfast from it
in the morning. So it came to pass that on the second day of his
affliction this bedevilled husband, his hunger merely aggravated by
the stale lumps of bread he had thought to make shift on, issued
forth at the new gate in quest of breakfast. There was little time,
and most of the shops were a distance off; but just opposite was a
flaming little chandler’s shop, newly opened. It was thinly stocked
enough, but it would be hard luck indeed if it did not hold something
eatable. And so Nan May’s first customer that day was the starved
husband.
“Got anythink t’ eat?” he asked, his ravening gaze piercing the bare
corners of the shop. “Got any bacon?”
“Yes, sir,” Nan May answered, reaching for the insignificant bit of
“streaky” that was all she had.
“No—cooked, I mean. Aincher got any cold boiled ’ock?”
“No, sir.”
“Y’ ought t’ ave some cooked ’ock. Lots ’ud ’ave it in the yard. I
can’t eat that—the smiths’ shop ’s the other end o’ the yard, an’ I
got nothing to toast it with. Aincher got nothing else?”
Nan May grasped the situation, and conceived an instant notion, for
indeed she had inborn talent as a shopkeeper, though till now it had
had no chance to show itself. “Will you wait five minutes?” she
asked.
Yes, he would wait five minutes, but no more: and he sat on the
empty case, from which Uncle Isaac had delivered his
recommendation of Enterprise. Nan May cut two rashers and retired
to the shop parlour. In three minutes the hungry customer was
hammering on the counter, declaring that he could wait no longer.
Pacified by assurances from within, he resigned himself to a minute
and a half more of patience: when Mrs. May returned with a massive
sandwich, wherein the two rashers, fresh frizzled, lay between two
thick slices of bread. Lifting the top slice for a moment, as
guarantee of good faith, Nan May exchanged the whole ration for
threepence.
“If you’d like any cold boiled bacon, sir,” she said, “I shall have some
at one o’clock.”
He heard, but he was off at a trot with his sandwich. In five minutes
Nan May’s bonnet was on, and in five more Bessy was minding shop
alone, while her mother hastened to Mr. Dunkin’s for a hock of
bacon. Here was a possible change of fortune, and Nan May was
not a woman to waste a chance.
Boiled and cooled—or cooled enough for the taste of hungry riveters
—the hock stood in a dish on the counter at one o’clock, flanked by
carving-knife and fork. A card, bearing the best 10 that Bessy could
draw, advertised the price, and the first quarter-pound of slices was
duly cut for the desolate husband, who came back, a little later, for
two ounces more; for he had been ill-fed for two or three days, and
the new baby made an event wherewith some extra expense was
natural. Boys came for two other quarter-pounds, so that it was
plain that the first customer had told others; and a loaf was cut up
to go with the bacon.
Mrs. May announced the new branch of trade to Johnny when he
came to dinner; and though as yet the returns were small enough,
there was a new chance, and his mother was hopeful of it; so he
went back to the lathe with a lighter heart.
That night the riveters worked overtime, and the bacon was in better
demand still. More, at night two or three men took home a snack in
paper, for supper; and from that day things grew better daily. The
hock was finished by the afternoon of the next day, and the
establishment was out of pickles; for men and boys who brought
their own cold meat with them came now for pickles. Trade was
better as the days went on, and Christmas, though it found them
poor enough, was none so sad a festival after all. And in a month,
when the gate had been formally opened for some time, and the
men streamed by in hundreds, three large hocks would rarely last
two days; and there was an average profit of three shillings a hock.
More, the bread came in daily in batches, at trade price, and cheese
and pickles went merrily. But what went best, and what increased in
sale even beyond this point, was the bacon. Some customers called
it ham, which pleased Nan May; for indeed her cooking hit the
popular taste, and she began to feel a pride in it. Men who went
home to dinner would buy bacon to take home for tea; and as many
of these lived in Harbour Lane and thereabout, custom soon came
from their wives, in soap and candles, treacle and pepper and
blacking. Nan May’s trade instinct grew with exercise. She found
the particular sort of bacon that best suited her purpose and her
customers’ tastes; she had regular boilings throughout the week;
she quickly found the trick of judging the quality of whatever she
bought; and she bought to the best use of her money.
But here it must be said that Nan May, in her new prosperity,
behaved toward one benefactor with an undutiful forgetfulness that
was near ingratitude. For she bought almost nothing of Mr. Dunkin.
He was reasonably grieved. True, she had begun by getting her first
stock of him, but even then her critical examination of what was
sent showed an unworthily suspicious attitude of mind. She even
sent back many things and demanded better, wilfully blind to the
fact that Mr. Dunkin could turn her out of the shop at a week’s notice
if he pleased; though indeed in his own mind he was not vindictive,
for another new tenant would be hard to find. He even submitted to
outrage ending in actual loss and humiliation. For a large tin of
mustard was Mrs. May’s first supply, and it was a tin from among
those kept for sale to small shopkeepers, and not on any account to
be sold from retail, across Mr. Dunkin’s own counter. But something
in the feel and taste of this mustard did not please Nan May (though
indeed she was not asked to eat it), and it went back. Now it
chanced that Mr. Dunkin had taken on a new shopman that week,
and this bungling incapable straightway began selling mustard from
the returned tin. He had served three customers before his blunder
was perceived, and then the matter came to light purely because the
third customer chanced to be a food and drug inspector. This
functionary gravely announced himself as soon as he had good hold
of the parcel, and handsomely offered the return of a third part of
the mustard, in a sealed packet. And the upshot was a fine of five
pounds and costs for Mr. Dunkin, on the opinionative evidence of an
analyst, who talked of starch and turmeric and ginger—all very
excellent substances, as anybody knows. Truly it was a vexatious
blow for Mr. Dunkin, and an unjust; for certainly the fault was not
his, and to sell such an article, retail, was wholly against his
principles. But he never complained, such was his forbearance:
never spoke of his hardship to a soul, in fact, except when he
“sacked” the new assistant. It was even said that he had offered a
reporter money to keep it out of the papers; and though it did get
into the papers (and at good length too) yet the effort was kindly
meant. For truly it could but give Mrs. May pain to learn that she
had been the cause of Mr. Dunkin’s misfortune, if she were a woman
of any feeling at all.
But as time went, he began to doubt if she were, for her custom
dropped away to nothing. The rate at which bacon was handed in
from the cart of a firm somewhere in the Borough, was scandalous
to behold. Before his very eyes, too, when he called for the rent.
He employed a collector, but presently took to coming for the rent
himself, that by his presence and his manner he might shame so
thankless a tenant into some sense of decency, some order for
bacon or mustard. He coughed gently and stared very hard at the
incoming goods, but Nan May was in no wise abashed, and gave the
carman his directions with shameless composure. With his
sympathetic stop full out, Mr. Dunkin asked how trade was, and Nan
May answered in proper shopkeeper terms, that “she mustn’t
grumble.” With hums and purrs, he led back through casual
questions and answers to the stock he had at first supplied, and
asked her how she had done with this, and how that had “gone off.”
But her answers were so artlessly direct, so inconsiderately truthful,
that good Mr. Dunkin was clean baffled, and reduced at last to a
desperate hint that if anything were wanted he could take the order
back with him. But he got no order, so he purred and hummed his
way into Harbour Lane, and so away; and after a time the collector
came in his stead.
Mr. Dunkin resolved to wait. He had some doubts of the
permanence of this new prosperity in the shop. The place had never
brought anybody a living yet, and he should not feel convinced till he
had seen steady trade there for some time. Nan May’s activities
could always be kept from flagging by judicious increases of rent,
and if the thing grew well established by her exertions, and was
certain to continue a paying concern, why, here would be a new
branch of Mr. Dunkin’s business ready made. It needed but a week’s
notice, given unexpectedly, at a properly chosen time, when no
neighbouring shop was to let, and a good stroke of business was
happily completed. Mrs. May would vanish, a man would go in to
manage at a pound or twenty-five shillings a week and his quarters,
there would be no interruption to trade (for the outgoing tenant
would naturally keep at work till the last minute, to get what little
she could), and Mr. Dunkin would have a new branch, paying very
excellently, with no trouble to himself. Mr. Dunkin had established
other branches in the same way, and found it a very simple and
cheap arrangement. There was no risk of his own capital, no trouble
in “working-up” the trade, no cost of goodwill, and rent was coming
regularly while the tenant laboured with the zeal of a man who
imagines he is working for his own benefit and his children’s. The
important thing was to give nothing but a weekly tenancy; else the
tenant might find time to get going somewhere near at hand, and so
perhaps deprive Mr. Dunkin of the just reward of his sagacity,
foresight, and patience. But there was little difficulty in that matter.
Beginners were timid and glad of a weekly tenancy, fearing the
responsibility of anything longer, at first; and afterwards—well,
things were in a groove, and Mr. Dunkin was so very kind and
sympathetic that it wasn’t worth while to bother about a change.
And by this method Mr. Dunkin, judiciously selecting his purchases in
shop property, had acquired two or three of his half-dozen branches,
and flourished exceedingly; which all kindly souls rejoiced to see.
In the beginning he had no thought of this plan for the Harbour
Lane shop, being mainly concerned to get a tenant, no matter in
what trade; and indeed in his eye the place was as little suited for
chandlery as for anything. Even now he must wait, for he doubted
the lasting quality of the new prosperity; better a few years of
forbearance than a too hurried seizure of a weakening concern, to
find little more than the same tenantless shop on his hands after all.
And if it seemed that the trade owed anything to the personal
qualities and connexions of Mrs. May, well, it would be a simple
thing to keep her on to manage, instead of a man. It would be an
act of benevolence, moreover, to an unfortunate widow, and come
cheaper. But that was a matter for the future.
Meanwhile Nan May, active and confident, filled her shop by
purchase from whatsoever factor sold best and cheapest, and
travellers called for her orders. The hungry husband who first came
for cooked bacon she always treated with particular consideration,
finding him good cuts. He ceased his regular visits in three weeks or
less, and Nan May, taught by experience in her earlier London life,
well guessed the cause of his coming. In the spring, three months
or so later, great crowds thronged about the ship-yard to see the
launch of the battleship that overtime had so long been worked on;
and when the launch was over, this man and his wife, the man
carrying the baby, came into the shop for something to celebrate the
occasion at tea. The parents did not altogether comprehend Nan
May’s enthusiasm over the baby, which she took from its father’s
arms and danced merrily about the shop, while customers waited.
But they set it down to admiration of its personal beauty, though
truly it was an ordinary slobbery baby enough. But it went away
down the street in great state, triumphantly stabbing at its mouth
with the sugarstick gripped by one hand, and at its father’s whiskers
with that brandished in the other.
 XV.

On a Saturday afternoon about this time, Uncle Isaac, in his best

black suit and very tall hat, and with the Turk’s-head walking-stick in
his hand, started out to see a foreman. Work was rather slack just
now (shipwrights’ work was slack everywhere), and the three
holidays a week that once were the glory and boast of a free and
independent shipwright, were now apt to be a woeful compulsion.
Uncle Isaac had been of late poorer (because idler) than he liked,
and in such case it was his way to seek the chance of meeting his
foreman out of hours, in order to a display of rhetoric, oblique
flattery, and dexterous suggestion, that might influence a distribution
of short time that would be more favourable to the orator.
He had wondered much as to the fortunes of Nan and her children,
but as it has been said, his tenderness of heart kept him as far as
possible from what he believed must now be a scene of sheer failure
and destitution: if, indeed, the shop were not abandoned; and he
was by no means anxious that his poor relations should discover his
new lodgings. So now he picked his way with circumspection, and
with careful cogitation of a mental map of the streets; because a
thoughtless straightforward journey would take him much too near
to Harbour Lane.
He crossed a swing bridge that gave access to a hundred and fifty
yards of roadway ending in another swing bridge. But there was a
crook in the road, and when he passed it he found that the second
bridge was open. Now in Blackwall an “open” bridge did not mean
one that the passenger could cross; that was a “shut” bridge. The
“open” bridge was one swung aside to let a ship through, as a pair
of gates is opened for a carriage. So Uncle Isaac resigned himself to
wait, with an increasingly impatient group, till the bridge should
swing into place again and give passage. He stood behind the chain
that hung across the road to check traffic, and meditatively rubbed
his nose with the Turk’s-head. Presently he grew conscious of a
rusty figure on his left, edging unsteadily a little nearer.
“’Ow do, Mr. Mundy?” came a hoarse whisper. And Mother Born-
drunk, a trifle less drunk than usual, but careful to grasp a post,
leered a grimy leer and waved her disengaged hand in his face, as
one saluting a friend at a great distance. Uncle Isaac emitted a non-
committal grunt—one that might be taken for an accidental cough by
the bystanders—and sidled a foot or two away. For he, too, had
known Emma Pacey in her more decent days, and, with other
acquaintances of that time, was sometimes put to shifts to avoid her.
Mother Born-drunk left the post and followed her victim. “Don’ run
’way,” she ejaculated, unsteadily. “I’m ole pal. Mish’ Mundy!” She
thrust out a foul paw, and dropped her voice coaxingly. “Len’sh
twopence!” Uncle Isaac gazed uneasily in another direction, and
took more ground to the right. The waiting passengers, glad of a
little amusement, grinned one at another.
“J’year, Mr. Mundy!” This in a loud voice, with an imperious gesture.
“J’year! Can’tche’ answer when a lady speaks t’ye?”
“Go on, guv’nor!” said a boy encouragingly, sitting on a post.
“Where’s yer manners? Take auf yer ’at to the laidy!” And there was
a snigger. Uncle Isaac shifted farther still, and put a group of men
between himself and his persecutor. But she was not to be so easily
shaken off. Drawing herself up with a scornful majesty that was
marred by an occasional lurch, and the bobbing of the tangled
bonnet hanging over one ear, she came after Uncle Isaac through
the passage readily made by the knot of men.
“Ho! so it’s this, is it,” she declaimed, with a stately backward sweep
of the arm. “If a lady asks a triflin’ favour you insult ’er. Ye low,
Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.

More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge

connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and

personal growth every day!

ebookbell.com