With the spring the steady application of paint in Harbour Lane burst into a fury.  Everywhere the houses and the flagstaffs and the fences took new coats of many colours, changing as the season went, and the paint-pot traffic fell into a vaster confusion.  As tops were “in” among the boys, the smell of paint grew day by day, and when the marble season began little else could be smelt.  With July came Fairlop Friday, and Bessy wondered at the passing of a great model of a rigged ship on wheels, drawn by horses, and filled with jubilant shipwrights on their way to Epping Forest, in accord with yearly custom.  She had grown to consider the forest as a place so far off (though indeed she knew the distance in mere miles) that it came almost as a surprise to see people starting out to drive there in a few hours with so slow a vehicle, and to return the same night.

Bob Smallpiece had written once or twice (he kept an eye on the empty cottage, and looked out for a tenant), but he had never made a visit, as Nan May had asked him.  The last news was that his bedridden old mother was worse, and not expected to live.

p. 151The trade went well—better than ever, indeed, and scarce a month passed but Nan May put a sovereign or two in the post-office savings bank; and Uncle Isaac began secretly to look upon the shop in Harbour Lane as a convenient retreat for his later years.  Already he took as many meals there as possible, for, as he said, he could get no proper attention in his new lodgings.  Of his old friend Mr. Butson he had seen nothing for months.  For Butson, he knew, had lost his berth on the steamboat, and had fallen on evil times—and Uncle Isaac never intruded on private griefs of this description.

But late in the year, when the anniversary of Johnny’s apprenticeship was nearing, and when Johnny himself was near a head taller—for he grew quickly now—Uncle Isaac saw Butson from afar as he crossed the docks, and Butson saw him.  There was no escape, but Uncle Isaac, with a grin and a wave of the hand, tried to pass on hurriedly, as though urgent business claimed his time.  But Mr. Butson rose from his bollard—bollards had been his most familiar furniture for months now—and intercepted him.

“You’ve ’ad about a year now to git that ’urry over,” he said, with something not unlike a sneer.  “If you’re goin’ that way, I’ll come along too.  Got any ’bacca?”

Uncle Isaac, with a bounteous air that scarce covered his reluctance, pulled out a screw of paper, and Mr. p. 152Butson filled his pipe.  For some little way he smoked in silence, for tobacco was an uncommon luxury with him just now, and he enjoyed a succession of puffs with no interruption.  Then he said, “Workin’ at Turton’s now?”

“No,” Uncle Isaac replied, with a slight cough.  “I—no, I ain’t workin’ there.”

“Thought not.  Looked out for y’ often.  An’ you moved too.”  Butson smoked again for a space, and then went on.  “I’ve ’ad a pretty awful year,” he said.  “Why I was very near goin’ stokin’ once or twice.”  (He had not quite gone, because the chief engineer always sent him ashore.)  “Nice thing, that, for a man o’ my bringin’-up.”

They walked on.  Truly the bad year had left its marks on Mr. Butson.  The soles were three-quarters gone from his boots, and the uppers were cracked.  He wore a mixture of ordinary and working clothes, frayed and greasy and torn, and he shivered under a flimsy dungaree jacket, buttoned so close to the neck as to hint an absence of shirt.  His bowler hat was weather-beaten and cracked, and the brim behind was beginning to leave the crown because of rain-rot.

Presently Uncle Isaac, impelled to say something, asked, “Bin out all the time?”

“Very near.  Got a job on a ’draulic, but the chap p. 153began jawin’ me about somethin’.  I wasn’t goin’ to stand that, so I just walked out.”

“Nothin’ else?”

“Not much.  One or two things I got on to, but they didn’t last.  Know the laundry over the Cut?  Well they took me on there to run the engine, an’ sacked me in a week.  Said I was asleep!  Measly swine.  Much the same at other places.  Seemed to want to treat me like—like any common feller.  But I showed ’em different to that!”

“Ah!” commented Uncle Isaac absently.  He was wondering which way to lead the walk, and how to take leave of his companion.  But his invention was at a stand, and presently the other went on.

“Well,” he said, “you ain’t got so much to say as you used.  Know any job you can put me on to?”

“No, I don’t,” replied Uncle Isaac with gloomy simplicity.  “Trade’s bad—very bad.  I bin workin’ short time meself, an’ standin’ auf day after day.  Stood auf to-day.”

“Well then, lend us a bob.”

Uncle Isaac started, and made the space between them a foot wider.  “Reely, Mr. Butson, I—”

“All right, make it two bob then, if you’d rather.  You’ve ’ad more ’n that out o’ me one time an’ another.”

“But—but I tell you I’m unfort’net meself.  I bin standin’ auf day after day—”

p. 154“Seems t............