ODD CRAFT

By W.W. Jacobs



A SPIRIT OF AVARICE


Mr. John Blows stood listening to the foreman with an air of lofty
disdain. He was a free-born Englishman, and yet he had been summarily
paid off at eleven o'clock in the morning and told that his valuable
services would no longer be required. More than that, the foreman had
passed certain strictures upon his features which, however true they
might be, were quite irrelevant to the fact that Mr. Blows had been
discovered slumbering in a shed when he should have been laying bricks.

[Illustration: "Mr. John Blows stood listening to the foreman with an air
of lofty disdain."]

"Take your ugly face off these 'ere works," said the foreman; "take it
'ome and bury it in the back-yard. Anybody'll be glad to lend you a
spade."

Mr. Blows, in a somewhat fluent reply, reflected severely on the
foreman's immediate ancestors, and the strange lack of good-feeling and
public spirit they had exhibited by allowing him to grow up.

"Take it 'ome and bury it," said the foreman again. "Not under any
plants you've got a liking for."