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“I got the next job myself. I didn’t hurry; I took my time and picked out a good one. It was in a lolly factory. I thought it would suit me–and it did, for a while. They put me on stirring up and mixing stuff in the jujube department; but I got so sick of the smell of it and so full of jujube and other lollies that I soon wanted a change; so I had a row with the chief of the jujube department and the boss gave me the sack.

“I got a job in a grocery then. I thought I’d have more variety there. But one day the boss was away, sick or something, all the afternoon, and I sold a lot of things too cheap. I didn’t know. When a customer came in and asked for something I’d just look round in the window till I saw a card with the price written up on it, and sell the best quality according to that price; and once or twice I made a mistake the other way about and lost a couple of good customers. It was a hot, drowsy afternoon, and by-and-bye I began to feel dull and sleepy. So I looked round the corner and saw a Chinaman coming. I got a big tin garden syringe and filled it full of brine from the butter keg, and, when he came opposite the door, I let him have the full force of it in the ear.

“That Chinaman put down his baskets and came for me. I was strong for my age, and thought I could fight, but he gave me a proper mauling.

“It was like running up against a thrashing machine, and it wouldn’t have been well for me if the boss of the shop next door hadn’t interfered. He told my boss, and my boss gave me the sack at once.

“I took a spell of eighteen months or so after that, and was growing up happy and contented when a married sister of mine must needs come to live in town and interfere. I didn’t like married sisters, though I always got on grand with my brothers-in-law, and wished there were more of them. The married sister comes round and cleans up the place and pulls your things about and finds your pipe and tobacco and things, and cigarette portraits, and “Deadwood Dicks”, that you’ve got put away all right, so’s your mother and aunt wouldn’t find them in a generation of cats, and says:

“‘Mother, why don’t you make that boy go to work. It’s a scandalous shame to see a big boy like that growing up idle. He’s going to the bad before your eyes.’ And she’s always trying to make out that you’re a liar, and trying to make mother believe it, too. My married sister got me a job with a chemist, whose missus she knew.

“I got on pretty well there, and by-and-bye I was put upstairs in the grinding and mixing department; but, after a while, they put another boy that I was chummy with up there with me, and that was a mistake. I didn’t think so at the time, but I can see it now. We got up to all sorts of tricks. We’d get mixing together chemicals that weren’t related to see how they’d agree, and we nearly blew up the shop several times, and set it on fire once. But all the chaps liked us, and fixed things up for us. One day we got a big black dog–that we meant to take home that evening–and sneaked him upstairs and put him on a flat roof outside the laboratory. He had a touch of the mange and didn’t look well, so we gave him a dose of something; and he scrambled over the parapet and slipped down a steep iron roof in front, and fell on a respected townsman that knew my people. We were awfully frightened, and didn’t say anything. Nobody saw it but us. The dog had the presence of mind to leave at once, and the respected townsman was picked up and taken home in a cab; and he got it hot from his wife, too, I believe, for being in that drunken, beastly state in the main street in the middle of the day.