it. Really, it was work waiting to be done. Not work for the poor, but
work with the poor. At home I talked about work, and Anonyma wrote about
it, and Cousin Gustus shuddered at it. You were doing it all right, but
where was I? Three days a week with soldiers' wives. My brow never
sweated a drop. I thought there must be something better than a
bird's-eye view of work. So I took a job at a bolster place.... Oh well,
it doesn't matter now. I earned ten shillings a week, and paid
half-a-crown for a little basement back. On Saturdays I got my Sunday
clothes out of pawn, and came to tea with Nana. Do you remember the
scones and the Welsh Rarebit that Nana used to make? I believe those
things were worth the terror of the pawnshop. Oh, Kew, those pawnshops!
Those little secret stalls that put shame into you where none was before.
The pawn man--why is it that when you're already frightened is the moment
that men choose to frighten you? Because weakness is the worst crime.
That I have proved. My work was putting fluff into bolsters. There was a
big bright grocers' calendar--the Death of Nelson--and if I could see it
through the fog of fluff I felt that was a lucky day. I had to eat my
lunch there, raspberry jam sandwiches--not fruit jam, you know, but
raspberry flavour. It wasn't nice, and it used to get fluffy in that air.
The others sat round and munched and picked their teeth and read Jew
newspapers. Have you ever noticed that whichever way up you look at a Jew
newspaper, you always feel as if you could read it better if you were
standing on your head? My governor was a Jew too. He wasn't bad, but he
looked wet, and his hair was a horror to me. His voice was tired of
dealing with fluff--though he didn't deal with it so intimately as we
did--and it only allowed him to whisper. The forewoman was always cross,
but always as if she would rather not be so, as if she were being cross
for a bet, and as if some one were watching her to see she was not kind
by mistake. She looked terribly ill, because she had worked there for
three months, which was a record. I stood it five weeks, and then I had a