One morning Edwin was busy in the shop with his own private , the paper boy, who went in of him. But this was not the same Edwin, though people who could only judge by features, and by the length of trousers and sleeves on legs and arms, might have thought that it was the same Edwin enlarged and corrected. Half a year had passed. The month was February, cold. Mr Enoch Peake had not merely married Mrs Louisa Loggerheads, but had died of an apoplexy, leaving behind him Cocknage Gardens, a widow, and his name painted in large letters over the word ‘Loggerheads’ on the lintel of the Dragon. The steam-printer had done the funeral cards, and had gone to the burial of his hopes of business in that quarter. Many funeral cards had come out of the same printing office during the winter, including that of Mr Udall, the great marble-player. It seemed uncanny to Edwin that a marble-player whom he had actually seen playing marbles should do anything so solemn as expire. However, Edwin had lost all interest in marbles; only once in six months had he thought of them, and that once through a funeral card. Also he was growing used to funeral cards. He would enter an order for funeral cards as nonchalantly as an order for butterscotch labels. But it was not deaths and the spectacle of life as seen from the shop that had made another Edwin of him.  
What had changed him was the slow daily influence of a large number of duties none of which strained his , and the monotony of them, and the constant conventionality of his deportment with customers. He was still a youth, very youthful, but you had to keep an eye open for his youthfulness if you wished to find it beneath the little man that he had been transformed into. He now took his watch out of his pocket with an absent gesture and look exactly like his father’s; and his tones would be a reflection of those of the last important full-sized man with whom he had happened to have been in contact. And though he had not developed into a dandy (finance forbidding), he kept his hair straight, and to Maggie about his collars every fortnight or so. Yes, another Edwin! Yet it must not be assumed that he was growing in discontent, either or acute. On the contrary, the of discontent troubled him less and less.
 
To the paper boy he was a real man. The paper boy accepted him with unreserved fatalism, as Edwin accepted his father. Thus the boy stood passive while Edwin brought business to a standstill by the “Manchester Examiner.” It was Saturday morning, the morning on which the “Examiner” published its Literary Supplement. All the children read eagerly the Literary Supplement; but Edwin, in of his office, got it first. On the first and second pages was the story, by George MacDonald, W. Clark Russell, or Mrs Lynn Linton; then followed readable extracts from new books, and on the fourth page were selected jokes from “Punch.” Edwin somehow always began with the jokes, and in so doing was rather ashamed of his . He would skim the jokes, glance at the titles of the new books, and look at the dialogue parts of the serial, while business and the boy waited. There was no hurry then, even though the year had reached 1873 and people were saying that they would soon be at the middle of the seventies; even though the Act had come into force and publicans were predicting the end of the world. Morning papers were not delivered till ten, eleven, or twelve o’clock in Bursley, and on Saturdays, owing to Edwin’s laudable interest in the best periodical literature, they were apt to be delivered later than usual.
 
Two.
On this particular morning Edwin was disturbed in his studies by a greater than the paper boy, a greater even than his father. Mr Osmond Orgreave came stamping his cold feet into the shop, the floor of which was still a little damp from the watering that preceded its . Mr Orgreave, though as far as Edwin knew he had never been in the shop before, went straight to the coke-stove, his knees, and began to warm his hands. In this position he opened an interview with Edwin, who dropped the Literary Supplement. Miss Ingamells was momentarily absent.
 
“Father in?”
 
“No, sir.”
 
Edwin did not say where his father was, because he had received general instructions never to ‘volunteer information’ on that point.
 
“Where is he?”
 
“He’s out, sir.”
 
“Oh! Well! Has he left any instructions about those for the Shawport Board School?”
 
“No, sir. I’m afraid he hasn’t. But I can ask in the printing office.”
 
Mr Orgreave approached the counter, smiling. His face was angular, rather , and harsh, with a grey moustache and a short grey beard, and yet his demeanour and his voice had a jocular, youthful quality. And this was not the only contradiction about him. His clothes were extremely elegant and nice in detail—the whiteness of his would have struck the most casual observer—but he seemed to be perfectly of his clothes, indeed, to show carelessness concerning them. His finger-nails were marvellously tended. But he in pencil on his , and was not offended by a grey mark on his hand due to the top of the stove. The idea in Edwin’s head was that Mr Orgreave must put on a new suit of clothes once a week, and new linen every day, and take a bath about once an hour. The man had no ceremoniousness. Thus, though he had never spoken to Edwin, he made no preliminary of not being sure who Edwin was; he chatted with him as though they were old friends and had parted only the day before; he also chatted with him as though they were equals in age, , and wealth. A strange man!
 
“Now look here!” he said, as the conversation proceeded, “those specifications are at the Sytch . If you could come along with me now—I mean now—I could give them to you and point out one or two things to you, and perhaps Big James could make a start on them this morning. You see it’s urgent.”
 
So he was familiar with Big James.
 
“Certainly,” said Edwin, excited.
 
And when he had told the paper boy to do portions of the newspaper job which he had always held the paper boy was absolutely of doing, he sent the boy to find Miss Ingamells, informed her where he was going, and followed Mr Orgreave out of the shop.
 
Three.
“Of course you know Charlie’s at school in France,” said Mr Orgreave, as they passed along Wedgwood Street in the direction of Saint Luke’s Square. He was really very companionable.
 
“Er—yes!” Edwin replied, explosive, and buttoning up his tight overcoat with an important business air.
 
“At least it isn’t a school—it’s a university. Besançon, you know. They take university students much younger there. Oh! He has a rare time—a rare time. Never writes to you, I suppose?”
 
“No.” Edwin gave a short laugh.
 
Mr Orgreave laughed aloud. “And he wouldn’t to us either, if his mother didn’t make a fuss about it. But when he does write, we gather there’s no place like Besançon.”
 
“It must be splendid,” Edwin said thoughtfully.
 
“You and he were great chums, weren’t you? I know we used to hear about you every day. His mother used to say that we had Clayhanger with every meal.” Mr Orgreave again laughed .
 
Edwin blushed. He was quite startled, and immensely flattered. What on earth could the Sunday have found to tell them every day about him? He, Edwin Clayhanger, a subject of conversation in the household of the Orgreaves, that mysterious household which he had never entered but which he had always pictured to himself as being so finely superior! Less than a year ago Charlie Orgreave had been ‘the Sunday,’ had been ‘old Perish-in............