In the very beginning of his career at the warehouse he trembled more than once, when the outer door opened, at the possibility of someone who had been with him in the old days coming in, and finding him there hauling parcels about, and for the most part without a coat; every time the door swung back on its hinges he felt it might be possible that Moira or Alice--or, worst thought of all, Charlie Purdue--might walk into the place: Charlie, with a grin upon his good-humoured face that would have been exasperating. But, of course, no one ever came, and after a time he ceased to watch the door. For the most part in the evenings he wandered about the streets--staring into shop windows, and lingering about outside theatres, and generally touching the mere fringe of the great life that was pulsing all about him. But when some twelve months had gone by, the coming of younger lads than himself to the boarding-house as well as to the warehouse sent him a step up in each place; so that at the boarding-house he had a tiny room at the very top of the house to himself--a mere cupboard, but still a room in his eyes; while at the warehouse he somehow got to a desk whereat he wore his coat, and left the parcels behind. And in so doing gained a little money for himself in addition to the meagre pocket-money he had had. That room at the top of the house became in a very big sense the boy's home. It was something to return to; something to know, in the stress and worry of the day, was waiting for him, even though he might occupy it for but a few hours at the most. And no sooner had he got that room than he set about, in quite an imitative fashion, to do what others had done before him. An imitative fashion, because he had lighted by accident upon what was to him a wonderful romance; the story of a boy as poor as he was, and working as hard as he worked, who had gathered books about him, and made of himself a great and celebrated man.