He looked up, and saw a man standing in the doorway--a man whom he had known years ago, who had once worked side by side with him in the factory, and had left and gone over into Rossendale before Myles had been promoted from the weaving shed to the warehouse. He stared blankly at the man, who had been drinking, and though by no means drunk, was decidedly elevated. ‘Come in, mon?’ he cried. ‘It’s years sin’ I saw you. Come in, and have a glass, for old acquaintance sake. I’ll stand it.’ He would not be gainsaid, but rolled out, and pulled his former friend into the taproom. There were half a dozen men there, all more or less happy and free from care, as it seemed to Myles. They welcomed him noisily, and his friend asked him, with unnecessary affectionateness of tone and manner, what it should be. ‘What? Oh, anything. What you are having yourself,’ said Myles, greeting first one and then another of them, and thinking, with a kind of savage mirth, within himself, that there were more kinds of pleasure in the world than one; since he could not have one kind, he might as well try another. He would see whether these men, who seemed so pleased to see him, were really such bad company after all. And he sat down, and waited until a girl brought him a glass of steaming hot punch--whisky punch; that was what they were drinking. ‘Now, then,’ cried his acquaintance, ‘good luck to you, Myles! Here’s to our next merry meeting, eh?’ ‘To our next!’ said Myles, raising the glass to his lips, and then, even as it touched them, feeling as if he had suddenly come to his senses, he put the glass down on the table. ‘Not yet,’ he said, half aloud, and got up from his seat and walked out of the room, shaking off the hands that were outstretched to stay him, and unheeding the loud and angry expostulations which came after him. ‘Pah!’ he exclaimed, as he took his way along the road again; ‘I’m not come to that yet!’