It fell to Mr. Pigott to find a job of work for Ernie when his favourite left school: for at that date there were no Labour Bureaux, no Juvenile Advisory Committees, no attempt to make the most of the country's one solid asset--its Youth. And the rich had not yet made their grand discovery of the last twenty-five years--that the poor have bodies; and that these bodies must be saved, even if it cost a little more than saving their souls, which can always be done upon the cheap. Mr. Pigott had little difficulty in his self-imposed task, for he did not mean to remain a schoolmaster all his life, and was already dabbling in the commercial life of the growing town. Ernie started as an office-boy in a coal-merchant's office in Cornfield Road by the Central Station, which formed the junction between the Old Town and the New. Before the boy embarked on his career, Mr. Pigott invited him to tea and lecture. "It's your own fault if you don't get on," said the schoolmaster aggressively after the muffins. "Rests with yourself. Office boy to President--like they do in America. Make a romance of it." "I shall try, sir," cried Era, with the easy enthusiasm characteristic of him. "I'll lay you won't, then!" retorted the other rudely. "I'll lay all the work I've put into you these ten years past goes down the drain. Now your grandfather..." He stopped short, remembering Mrs. Caspar had told him that their origin had been kept from the two boys.... At his new job Ern did not work very hard. It was not in him to do that; for he had his father's complete lack of ambition. But he worked just enough to keep his place, to pay his mother for his keep by the time he was seventeen, and have some "spending money," as he called it, over, with which to buy cigarettes, and join the cricket club. In time he even attained to the dignity of an office stool: for his handwriting was excellent, his ability undoubted, and his education as good as most. "Ern don't lick the stamps no more. He writes the letters," was Alf's report at home. The younger brother too had now launched out upon the world. But Alf was very different from Ern. He had his own ideas from the start and went his own way. Somehow he had ferreted out the facts about his grandfather's career; and that career it was his deliberate determination to surpass. Those were the early days of the motor industry and the petrol engine. Alf made his mother apprentice him to Hewson and Clarke, an enterprising young engineering firm in the East End, off Pevensey Road. "No Old Town for me," he said knowingly. "New Town's the bird!" And the boy worked with the undeviating energy of an insect. All day he was busy at the shop, and in the evening came home, grimy and tired, to have a wash and then settle down in the kitchen to study the theory of the petrol-engine. His mother, ambitious as her son, watched him with admiration, guarding his hours of study jealously from interruption.