BUT this launch was when Johnny’s ’prentice teeth were cut: when the running down of bolts and pins was beneath his notice, and he could be trusted with work at a small nibbling machine; when he had turned stop-valve spindles more than once, and felt secretly confident of his ability to cut a screw. Meantime history was making at the shop: very slowly at first, it is true. The holly had been made the most of; but it seemed to attract not at all. Penn’orths and ha’porths were most of the sales, and even they were few. Nan May grew haggard and desperate. Uncle Isaac had called once soon after the opening Saturday, but since had been a stranger. He had said that he was about to change his lodgings (he was a widower), but Nan knew nothing of his new address. In truth, such was Uncle Isaac’s tenderness of heart, that he disliked the sight or complaint of distress; and, in the manner of many other people of similar tenderness, he betook himself as far as possible from the scene thereof, and kept there. It was within a few days of Christmas when things seemed hopeless. Johnny, indeed, had never ceased to hope till now. He had talked of the certainty of struggling on somehow till his wages were enough for all; indeed, even the six shillings a week seemed something considerable now, though he knew that the rent alone came to ten. But even Johnny’s cheerfulness fell in face of the intenser dejection, the more open tears, of his mother and sister, as the days wore on. Long Hicks found him a quieter, less inquisitive boy, and a duller help than at first; and dinner at home was a sad make-believe. Each knew that the other two were contrasting the coming Christmas with the last. Then, gran’dad was with them, hale and merry; to look out of window was to look through a world of frosty twigs to woody deeps where the deer waited, timid and shadowy, for the crusts flung out afar for them from the garden. Now . . . but there! But it was just at this desperate time that a change came, as by magic. The men who pulled down the wall at the opposite side of the street gave place to others who built a mighty brick pier at each side of the opening: a pier designed to carry its half of the new gate. But ere the work was near complete, men and boys from the yard found it a convenient place to slip out and in at, on breakfast-time or dinner-time errands.