button Nan May had been careful to sew on his jacket cuff; a button used to tighten the sleeve, that it might not catch the driver on a lathe. It was early in Johnny’s experience—indeed he had been scarce a fortnight at the engine-shop—when a man coming in from an outdoor job just before dinner told Cottam the foreman, that an old friend was awaiting him at the gate, looking for a job. “An’ ’oo’s the ol’ friend?” asked Cottam, severely distrustful. “Mr. ’Enery Butson, Esquire,” the man answered, with a grin. “What? Butson?” the gaffer ejaculated, and his eyes grew rounder. “Butson? Agen? I’d—damme, I’d as soon ’ave a brass monkey!” And Mr. Cottam stumped indignantly up the shop. “Sing’lar, that,” observed a labourer who was helping an erector with a little yacht engine near Johnny’s bench. “Sing’lar like what I ’eard the gaffer say at Lumley’s when Butson wanted a job there. ‘What?’ sez ’e. ‘Butson? Why, I’d rayther ’ave a chaney dawg auf my gran’mother’s mantelpiece,’ ’e sez. ‘’E wouldn’t spile castin’s,’ ’e sez.” There were grins between the men who heard, for it would seem that Mr. Butson was not unknown among them. But when Johnny told his mother at dinner, she thought the men rude and ignorant; and she was especially surprised at Mr. Cottam. For some little while Johnny wondered at the girl who was hunting for a sick lady in the street on that dark Monday morning. He looked out for her on his way to and from his work, resolved, if he met her, to ask how the search had fared, and how the lady was. But he saw nothing of her, and the thing began to drop from his mind. Till a Saturday afternoon, when he went to see a new “ram” launched; for half-way to the ship-yard he saw a pretty girl—and surely it was the same. In no tears nor trouble now, indeed, but most disconcertingly composed and dignified—yet surely the same. Johnny hesitated, and stopped: and then most precipitately resumed his walk. For truly this was a very awful young person, icily unconscious of him, her casual glance flung serenely through his head and over it. . . . Perhaps it wasn’t the same, after all; and if not—well it was lucky he had said nothing. . . . Nevertheless his inner feeling was that he had made no mistake; more, that the girl remembered him, but was proud and would not own it. It didn’t matter, he said to himself. But the afternoon went a little flat; the launch was less interesting than one might have expected. There was a great iron hull, tricked out with flags; and when men knocked away the dog-shores with sledge-hammers, the ship slid away, cradle and all, into the water. There wasn’t much in that. Of course, if you knocked away the dog-shores, the ship was bound to slide: plainly enough. _That_ wasn’t very interesting. Johnny felt vaguely resentful of the proceedings. . . . But still he wondered afresh at the lost lady who was ill out of doors so early in the morning. XIV.