He seemed to have come back to her, and to be
talking to her now he sat there in the old house.
"--and then I got to the next town, and my horse was tired, so I could go
no further, and looked for work. A shopkeeper agreed to hire me as
salesman. He made me sign a promise to remain six months, and he gave me a
little empty room at the back of the store to sleep in. I had still three
pounds of my own, and when you just come from the country three pounds
seems a great deal.
"When I had been in the shop three days I wanted to go away again. A clerk
in a shop has the lowest work to do of all the people. It is much better
to break stones; you have the blue sky above you, and only the stones to
bend to. I asked my master to let me go, and I offered to give him my two
pounds, and the bag of mealies I had bought with the other pound; but he
would not.
"I found out afterward he was only giving me half as much as he gave to the
others--that was why. I had fear when I looked at the other clerks that I
would at last become like them. All day they were bowing and smirking to
the women who came in; smiling, when all they wanted was to get their money
from them. They used to run and fetch the dresses and ribbons to show
them, and they seemed to me like worms with oil on. There was one
respectable thing in that store--it was the Kaffer storeman.
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