assistant gas-fitter, envelope addresser, milk-cart assistant,
golf caddie, and at last helper in a bicycle shop. Here,
apparently, he found the progressive quality his nature had
craved. His employer was a pirate-souled young man named Grubb,
with a black-smeared face by day, and a music-hall side in the
evening, who dreamt of a patent lever chain; and it seemed to
Bert that he was the perfect model of a gentleman of spirit. He
hired out quite the dirtiest and unsafest bicycles in the whole
south of England, and conducted the subsequent discussions with
astonishing verve. Bert and he settled down very well together.
Bert lived in, became almost a trick rider--he could ride
bicycles for miles that would have come to pieces instantly under
you or me--took to washing his face after business, and spent
his surplus money upon remarkable ties and collars, cigarettes,
and shorthand classes at the Bun Hill Institute.

He would go round to Tom at times, and look and talk so
brilliantly that Tom and Jessie, who both had a natural tendency
to be respectful to anybody or anything, looked up to him
immensely.

"He's a go-ahead chap, is Bert," said Tom. "He knows a thing or
two."

"Let's hope he don't know too much," said Jessica, who had a fine
sense of limitations.

"It's go-ahead Times," said Tom. "Noo petaters, and English at
that; we'll be having 'em in March if things go on as they do go.
I never see such Times. See his tie last night?"