During this period, I grew to be supersensitive and self-conscious. I had a high, shrill voice, of which I was not aware till a doffer mimicked it one day. It was a small matter to him, but to me it was tragical. It wore on my imagination all through that day, it haunted me that night, it intruded itself on my solitude until I inwardly cried and grew depressed. “What’s ailing you, lad?” commented my uncle the next morning. “You look as if you’d lost your best friend?” But I would not unburden myself of the load of guilty feeling that was on my shoulders--guilt, because my voice was high, shrill, and childish! I was afraid to meet people whom I knew on the street, and when I saw one I knew coming towards me, I would dash to the opposite side, or, if escape like that were impossible, I would turn towards a shop-window or pretend to be interested in a bit of dirt on a curbstone. Mark Waterhouse, an old crippled Englishman, who ran the elevator and with whom I talked often while in the elevator room, seemed to understand me thoroughly when I told him how I felt. “Aye, lad,” he said, “it’s growing tha’ art. Growing swift, too: tall like a bullrush. It’s bad for thee to be in this ’ot room an’ working. Tha’ needs fresh hair; lots on’t. Lots o’ fresh hair to get in th’ blood an’ bone, like.” “But aunt won’t let me stay at home,” I said. “Aye,” grumbled the old man with a slow nod of his head, “they all say it. Th’ll do that. It’s the way o’ th’ mill, lad, an’ we’re born to ’t. You con put a plank ower a rose bush while the shoots’r young an’ growing, and the shoots’ll turn aside, go crook’d, get twisted, but the bush will grow, lad, spite o’ the plank. This work and bad air’s the plank on top o’ ye, but yeu’ll grow, spite on’t. Yeu’ll grow, for God started ye growing an’ ye can’t stop God. But yeu’ll grow bent at’ shoulders, legs’ll twist, feet’ll turn, knees’ll bend in! Sure’s ye live, they will. See me, lad,” he said, “the plank was on top o’ me, too. I went int’ mill at nine, an’ worked ’ard for a babby, I did! Con I walk straight? See me,” and he went at a pathetic hobble across the room, one knee turned in, the other foot twisted out of joint. “That’s t’ way it took me, lad, when I was in your shoes. I’m not t’ only one, either. Th’ mills full on ’em! Do I freighten ye, lad? Never mind. Do your best, spite on’t. I tell ye what! Stretch your arms mony times through t’ day. Oxercise! _Oxercise!_ Stretch thy muscles, thy legs, an’ get all the chance tha con so tha’ll grow spite on’t. Spite o’ work, bad air an’ all! Strengthen thasel’, lad. Don’t let twists, knots, an’ bends coom!”