Sons and Lovers - Daimon Club

The next day the bitch came. She was a shivering, miserable morsel.
Paul did not care for her; she seemed so like a wet rag that would
never dry. Then a man called for her, and began to make coarse jokes.
But Mr. Pappleworth nodded his head in the direction of the boy,
and the talk went on sotto voce.
Mr. Jordan only made one more excursion to watch Paul,
and then the only fault he found was seeing the boy lay his pen
on the counter.
"Put your pen in your ear, if you're going to be a clerk.
Pen in your ear!" And one day he said to the lad: "Why don't you
hold your shoulders straighter? Come down here," when he took him
into the glass office and fitted him with special braces for keeping
the shoulders square.
But Paul liked the girls best. The men seemed common and
rather dull. He liked them all, but they were uninteresting. Polly,
the little brisk overseer downstairs, finding Paul eating in the cellar,
asked him if she could cook him anything on her little stove.
Next day his mother gave him a dish that could be heated up.
He took it into the pleasant, clean room to Polly. And very soon it
grew to be an established custom that he should have dinner with her.