In the first place, he had come in a cap, and so forfended one ordeal. For it was the etiquette of the shop among apprentices that any bowler hat brought in on the head of a new lad must be pinned to the wall with the tangs of many files; since a bowler hat, ere a lad had four years at least of service, was a pretension, a vainglory, and an outrage. Next, his lagging saved his new ducks. The first lads down had prepared the customary trap, which consisted of a seat of honour in the best place near the fire; a seat doctored with a pool of oil, and situated exactly beneath a rafter on which stood a can of water taken from a lathe; a string depending from the can, with its lower end fastened behind the seat. So that the victim accepting the accommodation would receive a large oily embellishment on his new white ducks, and, by the impact of his back against the string, induce a copious christening of himself and his entire outfit. But it chanced that an elderly journeyman from the big shop—old Ben Cutts—appeared on the scene early, wiping his spectacles on his jacket lining as he came. He knew nothing of a fresh ’prentice, saw nothing but a convenient and warm seat, and hastened to seize it. The lads were taken by surprise. “No—not there!” shouted one a few yards away. “Fust come fust served, me lad,” chuckled old Ben Cutts, as he dropped on the fatal spot. “’Ere I am, an’ ’ere I—” With that the can fell, and Johnny at the door was astonished to observe a grey-headed workman, with a pair of spectacles in his hand and a vast oily patch on his white overalls, dripping and dancing and swearing, and smacking wildly at the heads of the boys about him, without hitting any. There were no more tricks that breakfast-time. For when at length old Ben subsided to his meal, he put a little pile of wedges by his side, to fling at the first boy of whose behaviour he might disapprove. And as his spectacles were now on his nose, and his aim, thus aided, was known to be no bad one, and as the wedges, furthermore, were both hard and heavy, breakfasts were eaten with all the decorum possible in a smiths’ shop. Johnny’s new can was satisfactorily blackened, and his breakfast was well disposed of. Such youths as tried him with verbal chaff he answered as well as he might, though he had as yet little of the Cockney boy’s readiness. And at last the bell rang again, and the breakfasters went back to work. Mr. Cottam, casting his glance about the shop in search of the simplest possible job for Johnny to begin on, with a steady man at hand to watch him, stopped as his gaze reached Long Hicks, and sent Johnny to help him with his bolts. And so Johnny found the tall man’s surmise verified, and the tall man himself received him with another grin a little less shy. He set him to running down bolts and nuts, showing him how to fix the bolt in a vice and work the nut on it with a spanner. Johnny fell to the task enthusiastically, and so the morning went.