We were back at ten minutes to one, and promptly, as the whistle blew, I stood once more before my drawing table and resumed the task. About three o'clock it seemed as if I could not stand another moment. My knees shook with fatigue and the unaccustomed strain of standing hour after hour, but there were no seats in the drafting room, and every one had to do his work standing up. At four I thought I should have to go to Knowlton's office and beg for mercy, but I didn't, because I knew he would think me unable to stick even a simple job through. At five the office staff left, including the drafting room, but there was still an hour for me. And this was to go on five and a half days a week, month after month, I thought! How did factory workers endure it without going mad?
When the six o'clock whistle blew, I could almost have cried with relief. I nearly staggered as I came into Knowlton's office, and sank into a chair mopping my face.
"Young gentleman from London, England, finds ten hours in an American factory on a nice warm July day something of a physical effort--shall I have that put in tomorrow's Social Notes?" he asked.
"You can't insult me, Knowlton," I said. "I am damned tired, and I have sense enough to admit it. So are you, I suspect, only you've been sitting down."
"Well," he conceded, "this elusive Senegambian I am after does make me tired--especially as friend Norwood is too sly a customer to be caught with the goods on him. If the Senegambian is there--and I've already found his footprints--we can trust Norwood to have made himself safe first. Let's go eat."
"Not at Schaefer's--God, not there!" I wailed. "I've had all I can stand of that hole."
"All right. We'll try the Rathskeller, but don't forget we haven't, as yet, any place to sleep."
I was too tired to eat when we reached the little musty hot German restaurant down under the sidewalk off State Street, but the waiter did produce a large foaming mug of German beer in which I blunted some of the acuteness of my physical aches and pains.
One evening, after we had been a few weeks in Deep Harbor, Knowlton arrived at my rooms as soon as he had had supper.
"Teddy, I've got a new job for you and one that'll keep you--well, it'll keep you pretty busy." There was one comforting thing about Knowlton, he never beat about the bush.