Presently there was a sudden thump at the door, which opened slowly and admitted the foremost part—it was the abdomen—of Cottam the foreman. He was of middle height, though he seemed short by reason of his corpulence; deliberate in all his movements, yet hard, muscular, and active. He turned, as it were on his own axis, at the edge of the door, shut it with one hand, while he dangled a marine peaked cap in the other; and looked, with serene composure, from over his scrub of grey beard, first at Mrs. May, then at Johnny, and last at his employer. “Oh, Cottam,” the gentleman said, writing one more word, and letting drop his pen, “this lad’s name is John May. I expect you’ll remember his father. Bad accident, I believe, in the heavy turning shop; died, in fact.” This with a slight glance at Nan May. The foreman turned—turned his whole person, for his head was set on his vast shoulders with no visible neck between—bent a trifle, and inspected Johnny as he would have inspected some wholly novel and revolutionary piece of machinery. “Y-u-u-us,” he said, with a slowly rising inflection, expressive of cautious toleration, as of one reserving a definite opinion. “Y-u-u-us!” “Well, he’s to come on as apprentice, and I’d like him to come into your shop. There’ll be no difficulty about that, will there?” “N-o-o-o!” with the same deliberate inflection, similarly expressive. “Then you’d better take him down, and tell the timekeeper. He may as well begin on Monday, I suppose.” “Y-u-u-us!” tuned once more in an ascending scale. And with that the acting partner bade Mrs. May good-morning, turned to his writing, and the business was over. Cottam the foreman put his cap on his head and led the way through the outer office, along a corridor, down the stairs and across the yard, with no indecent haste. It was a good distance to go, and Johnny was vaguely reminded of a circus procession that had once passed through Loughton, and that he had followed up for nearly three miles, behind the elephant. Half-way across the yard the foreman stopped, and made a half turn, so as to face Nan May as she came up. He raised an immense leathery fist, and jerked a commensurate thumb over his shoulder. “That’s the young guv’nor,” he said in a hoarse whisper, with a confidential twitch of one cheek that was almost a wink. “That’s the young guv’nor, that is. Smart young chap. Knowed ’im so ’igh.” He brought down his hand to the level of his lowest waistcoat button, twitched his cheek again, nodded, and walked on. The timekeeper inhabited a little wooden cabin just within the gates, and looked out of a pigeon-hole at all comers. Mr. Cottam put his head into this hole—a close fit—and when he withdrew it, the timekeeper, a grey man, came out of his side door and stared hard at Johnny. Then he growled “All right,” and went in again.