Be that as it may, I remember he said no word as we twain unloaded the sombre cargo and scraped each bar with utter care, making the scrapings into a ball. It was a long job, for customers kept coming in for pennyworths of soap, and halfpenny bundles of wood, and farthingsworths of blacking, at which trivial interruptions he still evinced no irritability, but when at last all was finished he weighed the ball of scrapings and found it equivalent to three bars and a half of soap. These he added to the pile of cleansed bars, repacked them, and started me off again, warning me, however, to go a long way round in order to avoid the road where I had come to grief; and on Saturday night he stopped the value of that soap out of my week's wages, which left me 2s., for I was then receiving 4s. per week. As I lived with a laundress, I was able to make a bargain for the ball of soap-scrapings, so managed to scrape through, though not without difficulty and many cursory remarks upon my behaviour. Now, as if my troubles were not sufficient, the baker's and butcher's boys on either side conceived a dislike to me, and lost no opportunity of making my life a burden, especially when, during spells of leisure in the evenings, I watched the store of pails, crockery, etc., arranged outside the shop. Many and harsh were the tricks they played on me, until I discovered that they both smoked, and thenceforward I purchased immunity from persecution with handfuls of shag tobacco, purloined from the back of the counter while the boss was inside at his meals, not recking of the risk I ran, in view of present ease. My experiences altogether were of an exceedingly varied character in this business, and I must often have made my employer feel that life was hardly worth living when my blunders were frequent and painful; yet, on the whole, I feel that he had his full money's worth out of me--especially on Saturday nights, when the shop would be full, mostly of urchins carrying all sorts of utensils and yelling "pint er penny oy-el," in twenty different keys all at once, while almost everybody watched an opportunity to steal a bundle of wood or some other trifling article. Once, indeed, a purblind old woman put a bundle of wood in her basket abstractedly, not noticing that it had a piece of thin string fast to it, and methinks I can now see her amazed face as on nearing the door the string grew tight and jerked her plunder out of the basket along with some other small parcels. But my governor was equal to the occasion. He said calmly-- "I don't think I took for that bundle, m'am, and you somehow got hold of the wrong one," quietly putting it back and handing her another, which she took, and forked out the halfpenny.