Mrs Partridge was disappointed in Chook. He was too much taken up with that red-headed cat, and he ate nothing when he came to tea on Sunday, although she ransacked the ham-and-beef shop for dainties--black pudding, ham-and-chicken sausage, and brawn set in a mould of appetizing jelly. She flattered herself she knew her position as hostess and made up for William's sulks by loading the table with her favourite delicacies. And Chook's healthy stomach recoiled in dismay before these doubtful triumphs of the cookshop. His mother had been a cook before she married, and, as a shoemaker believes in nothing but leather, she pinned her faith to good cooking. The family might go without clothes or boots, but they always had enough to eat. Chook's powerful frame, she asserted, was due entirely to careful nourishment in his youth. "Good meals keep people out of jail," was her favourite remark. Chook had learned this instead of the catechism, and the sight of Pinkey's starved body stirred his anger. What she wanted was proper nourishment to cover her bones.

The next Sunday, while Pinkey was frying some odds and ends in the pan to freshen them up for breakfast, Mrs Partridge, who was finishing a novelette in bed, heard a determined knock on the door. It was only eight o'clock. She called Pinkey, and ran to the window in surprise.

It was Chook, blushing as nearly as his face would permit, and carrying two plates wrapped in a towel. He pushed through to the kitchen with the remark "I'll just 'ot this up agin on the stove."

"But wot is it?" cried Pinkey, in astonishment.

Chook removed the upper plate, and showed a dish of sheep's brains, fried with eggs and breadcrumbs--a thing to make the mouth water.

"Mother sent these; she thought yer might like somethin' tasty fer yer breakfast," he muttered gruffly, in fear of ridicule.

Pinkey tried to laugh, but the tears welled into her eyes.

"Oh, Sarah will be pleased!" she cried.

"No, she won't," said Chook, grimly. "Wot yer can't eat goes back fer the fowls."

While Mrs Partridge was dressing, they quarrelled fiercely, because Chook swore she must eat the lot. Sarah ended the dispute by eating half, but Chook watched jealously till Pinkey declared she could eat no more.

The next Sunday it was a plate of fish fried in the Jewish fashion--a revelation to Pinkey after the rancid fat of the fish shop--then a prime cut off the roast for dinner, or the breast and wing of a fowl; and he made Pinkey eat it in his presence, so that he could take the plates home to wash. One Sunday he was so late that Mrs Partridge fell back on pig's cheek; but he arrived, with a suspicious swelling under his eye. He explained briefly that there had been an accident. They learned afterwards than an ill-advised wag in the street had asked him if he were feeding Pinkey up for the show. During the two rounds that followed, Chook had accidentally stepped on the plates.

Whenever Ada met Pinkey, she wanted to know how things were progressing; but Pinkey could turn like a hare from undesirable questions.

"Are you an' 'im goin' to git spliced?" she inquired, for the hundredth time.

"I dunno," said Pinkey, turning scarlet; "'e sez we are."

END OF PART I.

PART 2

THE SIGN OF THE "SILVER SHOE"

CHAPTER 12

THE SIGN OF THE "SILVER SHOE"

The suburban trains slid into the darkness of the tunnel at Cleveland Street, and, as they emerged into daylight on the other side, paused for a moment like intelligent animals before the spider's web of shining rails that curved into the terminus, as if to choose the pair that would carry them in safety to the platform. It was in this pause that the passengers on the left looked out with an upward jerk of the head, and saw that the sun had found a new plaything in Regent Street.

It was the model of a shoe, fifteen feet long, the hugest thing within sight, covered with silver leaf that glittered like metal in the morning sun. A gang of men had hoisted it into position last night by the flare of naphtha lamps, and now it trod securely on air above the new bootshop whose advertisement sprawled across half a page of the morning paper.

In Regent Street a week of painting and hammering had prepared them for surprises; two shops had been knocked into one, with two plate-glass windows framed in brass, and now the shop with its triumphant sign caught the eye like a check suit or a red umbrella. Every inch of the walls was covered with lettering in silver leaf, and across the front in huge characters ran the sign:

JONAH'S SILVER SHOE EMPORIUM

Meanwhile, the shop was closed, the windows obscured by blinds; but the children, attracted by the noise of hammering, flattened their noses against the plate glass, trying to spy out the busy privacy within.

Evening fell, and the hammering ceased. Then, precisely on the stroke of seven, the electric lights flashed out, the curtains were withdrawn, and the shop stood smiling like a coquette at her first ball.

Everything was new. The fittings glistened with varnish, mirrors and brass rods reflected the light at every angle, and the building was packed from roof to floor with boots. The shelves were loaded with white cardboard boxes containing the better sort of boot. But there was not room enough on the shelves, and boots and shoes hung from the ceiling like bunches of fruit; they clung to brass rods like swarming bees. The strong, peculiar odour of leather clogged the air. The shopmen stood about, whispering to one another or changing the position of a pair of boots as they waited for the customers.

A crowd had gathered round the window on the left, which was fitted out like a workshop. On one side a clicker was cutting uppers from the skin; beside him a girl sat at a machine stitching the uppers together at racing speed. On the other side a man stood at a bench lasting the uppers to the insoles, and then pegging for dear life; near him sat a finisher, who shaved and blackened the rough edges, handing the finished article to a boy, who gave it a coat of gloss and placed it in the front of the window for inspection. A placard invited the public to watch the process of making Jonah's Famous Silver Shoes. The people crowded about as if it were a play, delighted with the novelty, following the stages in the growth of a boot with the pleasure of a boy examining the inside of a watch.

At eight o'clock another surprise was ready. A brass band began to play popular airs on the balcony, hung about with Chinese lanterns, and a row of electric bulbs flashed out, marking the outline of the wonderful silver shoe, glittering and gigantic in the white light.

The crowd looked up, and made bets on the length of the shoe, and recalled the time, barely five years ago, when the same man--Jonah the hunchback--had astonished Botany Road with his flaring signs in red and white. True, his shop was still on the Road, for Regent Street is but the fag end of a long, dusty road where it saunters into town, snobbishly conscious of larger buildings and higher rents. Since then his progress had been marked by removals, and each step had carried him nearer to the great city. He had outgrown his shops as a boy outgrows his trousers.

It was reported that everything turned to gold that he touched. It was certain that he had captured the trade of the Road, and this move meant that he had fastened his teeth in the trade of the roaring city. And not so long ago people could remember when he was a common larrikin, reputed leader of the Cardigan Street Push, and working for old Paasch, whose shop was now empty, his business absorbed by Jonah with the ease one swallows a lozenge. And they say he began life as a street-arab, selling papers and sleeping in the gutter. Well, some people's luck was marvellous!

The crowd became so dense that the police cleared a passage through it, and the carts and buses slackened to a walk as they passed the shop, where the electric lights glittered, the Chinese lanterns swung gaily in the breeze, and the band struck noisily into the airs from a comic opera.

Meanwhile the shop was crowded with customers, impatient to be served, each carrying a coupon cut from the morning paper, which entitled the holder to a pair of Jonah's Famous Silver Shoes at cost price. And near the door, in an interval of business, stood the proprietor, a hunchback, his grey eyes glittering with excitement at seeing his dream realized, the huge shop, spick and span as paint could make it, the customers jostling one another as they passed in and out, and the coin clinking merrily in the till.

Yes, they were quite right. Everything that he touched turned to gold.

Outsiders confused his fortune with the luck of the man who draws the first prize in a sweep, enriched without effort by a chance turn of Fortune's wrist. They were blind to the unresting labour, the ruthless devices that left his rivals gaping, and the fixed idea that shaped everything to its needs. In five years he had fought his way down the Road, his line of march dotted with disabled rivals.

Old Paasch, the German, had been his first victim. Bewildered and protesting, he had succumbed to Jonah's novel methods of attack as a savage goes down under the fire of machine-guns. His shop was closed years ago, and he lived in a stuffy room, smelling vilely of tobacco-smoke, where he taught the violin to hazardous pupils for little more than a crust. He always spoke of Jonah with a vague terror in his blue eyes, convinced that he had once employed Satan as an errand-boy.

People were surprised to find that Jonah meant to live in the rooms over the new shop, when he could well afford to take a private house in the suburbs. It was said he treated his wife like dirt; that they lived like cat and dog; that he grudged her bare living and clothing.

Jonah set his lips grimly on a hint of these rumours.

Three years ago he had planted Ada in a house of her own, and had gone home daily to rooms choked with dirt, for with years of ease she had grown more slovenly. Servants were a failure, for she made a friend of them, and their families lived in luxury at her expense. And when Ada was left alone, the meals were never ready, the house was like a pigsty, and she sat complacently amidst the dirt, reading penny novelettes in a gaudy dressing-jacket, or entertaining her old pals from the factory.

These would sit through an afternoon with envy in their hearts, and cries of wonder on their lips at the sight of some useless and costly article, which Ada, with the instinct of the parvenu, had bought to dazzle their eyes. For she remained on the level where she was born, and the gaping admiration of her poorer friends was the only profit she drew from Jonah's success. If Jonah arrived without warning, they tumbled over one another to get out unseen by the back door, but never forgot to carry away some memento of their visit--a tin of salmon, a canister of tea, a piece of bacon, a bottle whose label puzzled them--for Ada bestowed gifts like Royalty, with the invariable formula "Oh! take it; there's plenty more where that comes from."

But the worst was her neglect of Ray, now seven years old, and the apple of Jonah's eye. She certainly spent part of the morning in dressing him up in his clothes, which were always new, for they were discarded by Jonah when the creases wore off; but when this duty, which she was afraid to neglect, was ended, she sent him out into the street to play in the gutter. His meals were the result of hazard, starving one day, and over-eating the next. And then, one day, some stains which Ada had been unable to sponge out elicited a stammering tale of a cart-wheel that had stopped three inches from the prostrate child.

This had finished Jonah, and with an oath he had told Ada to pack up, and move into the rooms over the shop, when they could be got ready.

Ada made a scene, grumbled and sulked, but Jonah would take no more risks. His son and his shop, he had fathered both, and they should be brought together under his watchful eye, and Ada's parasites could sponge elsewhere.

It had happened in time for him to have the living-rooms fitted up over the shop, for the part which was required as a store-room left ample space for a family of three. Ada gave in with a sullen anger, refusing to notice the splendours of the new establishment. But she had a real terror, besides her objection to being for ever under Jonah's sharp eyes.

Born and bred in a cottage, she had a natural horror of staircases, looking on them as dangerous contrivances on which people daily risked their lives. She climbed them slowly, feeling for safety with her feet, and descended with her heart in her mouth. The sight of others tripping lightly up and down impressed her like a dangerous performance on the tight-rope in a circus. And the new rooms could only be reached by two staircases, one at the far end of the shop, winding like a corkscrew to the upper floor, and another, sickening to the eye, dropping from the rear balcony in the open air to the kitchen and the yard.

Mrs Yabsley continued to live in the old cottage in Cardigan Street.

Jonah made her an allowance, but she still worked at the laundry, not for a living, as she carefully explained to every new customer, but for the sake of exercise. And she had obstinately refused to be pensioned off.

"I've seen too many of them pensioners, creepin' an' coughin' along the street, because they thought they was too old fer work, an' one fine mornin' they fergit ter come down ter breakfust, an' the neighbours are invited to the funeral. An' but for that they might 'ave lived fer years, drawin' their money an' standin' in the way of younger men. No pensions fer me, thank yer!"