It had rained all day, and now there was sullen clearance.  Paul, who had been bathing with some factory boys in the not very savoury canal a mile or so distant, had wandered mechanically to his brickfield library, which, by means of some scavenging process, he managed to keep meagrely replenished.  Here he had settled himself with a dilapidated book on his knees for an hour’s intellectual enjoyment.  It was not a cheerful evening.  The ground was sodden, and rank emanations rose from the refuse.  From where he sat he could see an angry sunset like a black-winged dragon with belly of flame brooding over the town.  The place wore an especial air of desolation.  Paul felt depressed.  Bathing in the pouring wet is a chilly sport, and his midday meal of cold potatoes had not been invigorating.  These he had grabbed, and, having done them up hastily in newspaper, had bolted with them out of the house.  He had been fined heavily for slackness during the week, and Mr. Button’s inevitable wrath at docked wages he desired to undergo as late as possible.  Then, the sun had blazed furiously during the last six imprisoned days, and now the long-looked for hours of freedom were disfigured by rain and blight.  He resented the malice of things.  He also resented the invasion of his brickfield by an alien van, a gaudy vehicle, yellow and red, to the exterior of which clinging wicker chairs, brooms, brushes and jute mats gave the impression of a lunatic’s idea of decoration.  An old horse, hobbled a few feet away, philosophically cropped the abominable grass.  On the front of the van a man squatted with food and drink.  Paul hated him as a trespasser and a gormandizer.

Presently the man, shading his eyes with his hand, scrutinized the small, melancholy figure, and then, hopping from his perch, sped toward him with a nimble and curiously tortuous gait.

He approached, a wiry, almost wizened, little man of fifty, tanned to gipsy brown.  He had a shrewd thin face, with an oddly flattened nose, and little round moist dark eyes that glittered like diamonds.  He wore cloth cap on the back of his head, showing in front a thick mass of closely cropped hair.  His collarless shirt was open at the neck and his sleeves were rolled up above the elbow.

“You’re Polly Kegworthy’s kid, ain’t you?” he asked.

“Ay,” said Paul.

“Seen you afore, haven’t I?” Then Paul remembered.  Three or four times during his life, at long, long intervals, the van had passed down Budge Street, stopping at houses here and there.  About two years ago, coming home, he had met it at his own door.  His mother and the little man were talking together.  The man had taken him under the chin and twisted his face up.  “Is that the nipper?” he had asked.

His mother had nodded, and, releasing Paul with a clumsy gesture of simulated affection, had sent him with twopence for a pint of beer to the public-house at the end of the street.  He recalled how the man had winked his little bright eye at his mother before putting the jug to his lips.