By that time I had rapidly begun to fish up odds and ends of experience, such as stood me in good stead, and, in spite of what was really little better than contemptible persecution on the overseer's part, I was making some little way at the printing-office. I shall not soon forget the feeling of pride with which on the first Friday night I heard my name called out by a business-like clerk with a book, after he had summoned everyone in the room, and received from him a little paper-bag containing my wages. "You haven't been full time, Grace," he said, entering the sum paid in a book; "but the firm said I was to pay you for the week, as you were a beginner." As soon as I thought I was unobserved, I counted out seven shillings, a sum that showed that I was a little favoured, for honestly I believe that I was not worth that amount to my employers. Hardly had I made sure of my good fortune than I had a visit from Jem Smith, who came up grinning. "Now, then," he said, "old Grim's gone for the night, and you've got to come down and pay your footing." I stared at him in my ignorance, but, fully under the impression that something unpleasant was meant, I resolutely determined to stay where I was, and I was saved from further persecution by Mr Hallett coming up, which was the signal for Jem Smith to sneak off. I asked Hallett what was meant, and he explained to me that it was a custom for working men on entering a new place to pay for some beer for their fellow-workmen. "But don't you pay a penny to the young wolves," he said, and I determined that I would not. I was well on in the second week, and during the intervening days I had been set to every dirty and objectionable task Mr Grimstone could invent for me, but I did them patiently and well. I had seen nothing of my employers, and but little of Mr Hallett, who seemed too busy to take much notice of me; but he somehow had a knack of turning up in emergencies, just when I required help and counsel, showing that he kept an eye upon me for my good. I noticed as I sat beneath a frame eating my dinner in the composing-room that he always employed a good deal of his time in drawing or calculating, and I found, too, that he was no great favourite with his fellow-workmen, who nicknamed him the steam-engine, because he worked so rapidly and did so much. It was very plain, too, that the overseer hated him, giving him the most difficult and unpleasant tasks, but they were always willingly done by Mr Hallett, who was too good a workman to be spared. I had just completed the washing of some very dirty type one day, and, according to orders, made my way up to Mr Grimstone's glass case, very dirty and grubby-looking, no doubt, when I stared with surprise on seeing there before me a little cleanly-shaven man who, except in clothes, was the exact counterpart of Mr Rowle.