I had not exaggerated when I told Archie Merridew that I might find some difficulty in obtaining from Rixon Tebb & Masters' leave of absence for the day of the Method examination. That examination was fixed for a Friday, a fortnight and some days after my refusal to set fork into that fragrantly steaming Surrey fowl of Archie Merridew's, and this falling on a Friday added to my difficulties. Or rather I should say that it added to Polwhele's difficulties, for it was to Polwhele I looked once more to find a way out for me. For Friday was a wage-day, and since I must have my eighteen shillings in order to live, a mere covering of my absence would not suffice. The cashier would have to be taken into the arrangement. But Polwhele had by now to some extent got over his dread, if not over his hatred, of me. When I put the matter to him he refused. This was in the street, during the luncheon hour. The louse refused to help me, and turned away. Exactly fifteen minutes later I had bearded the cashier himself, catching him at the door as he was returning from his meal. At first he looked at me as much as to say, "Did _I_ speak to _you"_? Then, finding it impossible to pretend he didn't know who I was, he said, "What is it?" I told him what I wanted, concealing only my reason for wanting it; and, after his first astonishment that I had taken the absolutely unprecedented course of addressing a request otherwise than through the usual channel, I found him not unmanageable. As a matter of fact, things were slack, and there was only one kind of labour that Rixon Tebb & Masters' would have preferred to that it had from the agency at eighteen shillings a week--namely, a "floating margin" waiting on the pavement to be taken on for an hour or two as it might be required. Gayns saw a chance of saving a day. "You don't expect to be paid for that day, do you?" he said. "No," I replied. He thought for a moment. "All right," he said. "You can come for your fifteen shillings on Thursday night." And Polwhele set another mark against me, that I had approached a superior over his head. As I entered the Business College at half-past ten on the morning of the examination it suddenly struck me that I had never been inside the place in the daytime before. By gaslight it was, as I have said, dingy enough, but by daylight it was shabby in the extreme. I walked round the rooms, noticing for the first time that the shorthand and typewriting rooms, which looked on the side street to the east of the block, were by far the lightest rooms on our top floor, and that the library in which I had received Evie's congratulations was little more than a thick twilight, which the cleaning of the single grimy back window that looked out over yards and chimney-pots would probably not greatly have improved. The room adjoining that, the old ledger-room, was not, except for the small high square of glass that gave on the head of the stairs, lighted at all.