or the delicacy of their hands. He would fall into passions for them
at dinner time, and try and show devotions by his manner of passing
the bread and margarine at tea. There was a very fair-haired,
fair-skinned apprentice in the adjacent haberdashery to whom he said
"good-morning" every morning, and for a period it seemed to him the
most significant event in his day. When she said, "I _do_ hope it will
be fine to-morrow," he felt it marked an epoch. He had had no sisters,
and was innately disposed to worship womankind. But he did not betray
as much to Platt and Parsons.

To Platt and Parsons he affected an attitude of seasoned depravity
towards womankind. Platt and Parsons were his contemporary apprentices
in departments of the drapery shop, and the three were drawn together
into a close friendship by the fact that all their names began with P.
They decided they were the Three Ps, and went about together of an
evening with the bearing of desperate dogs. Sometimes, when they had
money, they went into public houses and had drinks. Then they would
become more desperate than ever, and walk along the pavement under the
gas lamps arm in arm singing. Platt had a good tenor voice, and had
been in a church choir, and so he led the singing; Parsons had a
serviceable bellow, which roared and faded and roared again very
wonderfully; Mr. Polly's share was an extraordinary lowing noise, a
sort of flat recitative which he called "singing seconds." They would
have sung catches if they had known how to do it, but as it was they
sang melancholy music hall songs about dying soldiers and the old
folks far away.

They would sometimes go into the quieter residential quarters of Port
Burdock, where policemen and other obstacles were infrequent, and
really let their voices soar like hawks and feel very happy. The dogs