I breaks the pipe up, bit by bit, and puts all the
pieces in my pocket—right-hand trousers-pocket.

"What for?" says you.

Nothin' at all, as I knows on; but that's
what I did; and I am a-telling you what
happened. Perhaps it was because I felt
uncomfortable with nothing to rattle in my pocket.
Howsomever, my mind was made up; and
brightening up, and looking as cheerful as if I'd six-
and-thirty shillings to take on Saturday, I says
to her as was by my side:

"Polly, my lass, I'am a-going up to London!"

"Going where?" she says, lifting up her
head.

"London," I says; and then I began to think
about what going to London meant. For, mind
yer, it didn't mean a chap in a rough jacket
making up a bundle in a clean blue handkercher,
and then shovin' his stick through the
knot and sticking it over his shoulder, and then
stuffing his hands in his pockets, and taking
the road uppards, whistlin' like a blackbird.
No; it meant something else. It meant breaking
up a tidy little home as two young folks—
common people, in course—had been a saving
up for years, to make snug; it meant half
breaking a poor simple lass's heart to part with
this little thing and that little thing; tearing
up the nest that took so long a-building, and
was allus so snug arter a cold day's work. I
looked at the clean little winders, and then at the
bright kettle on the shiny black hob, and then
at the werry small fire as there was, and then
fust at one thing, and then at another, all so
clean and neat and homely, and all showing
how proud my lass was of 'em all, and then I
thought a little more of what going up to London
really did mean, and I suppose it must have
been through feeling low and faint and poorly,
and I'm almost ashamed to tell it, for I'm
such a big strong chap; but truth's truth. "Well,
somehow a blind seemed to come over my eyes,
and my head went down upon my knees, and
I cried like a schoolboy. But it went off, for
my lass was kneeling aside me in a minute, and
got my thick old head upon her shoulder, and
began a-doing all she could to make believe it
was all right, and she wouldn't mind a bit,
but we'd get on wonderful well up there;
and so we talked it over for long enough,
while she made believe to be so cheerful, and
knelt at my side, a-ciphering away—a-putting
down nought for herself, and a-carrying I don't
know how much for me—till I glowed up, under
the discovery that whether work was plenty,
or whether work was slack, I, Bill Stock—
christened William—was rich in my good wife.

That was something like a thought, that was,
and seemed to stiffen me up, and put bone and
muscle into a fellow till he felt strong as a lion;
so we set to talking over the arrangements;
and two days arter, Polly and I was in a lodging
in London.

Nex' morning I was up at five, and made
myself smart; not fine, but clean, and looking as
if I warn't afraid of work; and I finds my way
to one o' the big workshops, where the bell was
a-ringing for six o'clock, and the men was
a-scuffling in; while a chap with a book was on
the look-out to time the late ones, for stopping
on pay-day out of their wages—which is but fair,
yer know, for if two hundred men lost a quarter
of an hour apiece in a week, it would come
to something stiff in a year. Well, there was a
couple more chaps like me standing at the gate,
come to see if they could get took on, and one of
'em slips in, and comes out again directly
a-swearing and growling like anything, and then
t'other goes in, and he comes out a-swearing
too, and then I feels my heart go sinking down
ever so low. So I says, to the fust:

"Any chance of a job?" I says.

"Go to——" somewhere, he says, cutting up
rough; so I asks t'other one.

"Any chance of a job?" I says.

"Not a ha'porth," he says, turning his
back, and going off with the fust one; and I
must say as they looked a pretty pair of blacks.

So I stood there for quite five minutes
wondering what to do; whether I should go in
and ask for myself, or go and try somewheres
else. I didn't like to try, arter seeing two men
refused. All at once a tall sharp-eyed man comes
out of a side place and looks at me quite fierce.

"Now, my man," he says, "what's your
business? What do you want?"

"Job, sir," says I.

"Then why didn't you come in and ask?" he
says.

"Saw two turned back," I says.

"Oh! we don't want such as them here,"
he says, "but there's plenty of work for men
who mean it;" and then he looks through me
a'most. "I suppose you do mean it, eh?"

"Give us hold of a trowel," says I, spitting
in both hands.

"Bricklayer?" says he, smiling.

"Right," says I.

"From the country?" says he.

"Yes," says I.

"Work slack there?" says he.

"Awful," says I.

"You'll do," says he. "Here, Jones, put this
fellow in number four lot."

If you'll believe me, I could have taken hold
of him and hugged him; but I didn't, for I kep'
it for Polly.

Well—I wonder how many times I've said
well, since I begun!—I was in work now, and I
meant to keep it. Didn't I make the bricks and
mortar fly! My hodman did his day's work
that day, if he never did it afore. Then some
of the men began to take it up, and got to
chaffing; one says there'd soon be no work left;
and another says, I'd better have a couple o'
Paddies to keep me going, one for bricks, and
another for mortar; while one fellow makes
hisself precious unpleasant, by keeping on going
"puff! puff! puff!" like a steam-ingin', because I
worked so fast. But I let them chaff as long as
they liked; and bime-by I comes to be working
alongside of my steam-ingin' friend, and jest
as he'd been going it a little extra, I says to
quietly: