Eden Standish, he said sometimes. He wondered at the name.

The tales that Julia told were not the same, or the same Eden Standish, that you had heard for a very long time, it just went on in Julia’s talk, the things that a name did. It was not the Eden Standish standing in the shavings at Crick’s. She’s all right, Julia, he said. That got Julia narked. You could see that. It’s none of Miss Eden’s business, she said, to come nosin’ round here. Her face was red. It made you laugh. Because Julia had ideas about the Upper Classes. Julia closed up like a winkle. She was going to speak to Eden, she said. As if she was a kid, you said. Sometimes you wondered, said Julia, indeed you wondered.

Joe Barnett wondered also, about a lot of things, with which Eden Standish became connected, she was always walking in, if not to Crick’s, into Joe Barnett’s mind. We must meet sometimes, she said. Yes, he said, doubtfully. It was Julia’s voice. He was a bit uncertain. He waited for her to take the lead, because, because she was Miss Eden Standish. She was this above the girl he liked, that he liked to talk to. Which was wrong. Eden Standish, the girl he liked, was connected with the right side of things, the moments inside you that made you know rightness must predominate. It was a state where there was no fencing off of things. You didn’t listen to Julia’s voice. You listened to your own conviction.

Under the low roof at Crick’s, in the smell of glue, of shavings, in a spell between working, Joe Barnett felt a decision must be made. It would not be Julia’s decision. He knew that. He looked at the little bubble in the spirit-level that he held in his hands. The bubble was very steady. Like the decision in Joe’s mind. Because he couldn’t leave off thinking of Eden Standish, as more than a name in Julia’s talk. He thought about Eden, as she was when sitting near her, when standing by her. She had a thin mouth. She was altogether pretty thin. She had a used-up look. But it got you. He felt the little pulse in his throat, that was less steady than the bubble in his hands.

Wotcha, Joe! said Mo, the young Jewish kid who was a second hand at Crick’s. Wot’s made the clock stop, Joe? asked Mo.

We’re regulatin’ a bit, said Joe.

He took the plane. He took great sweeps out of the surface of a plank, till his shoulders ached, but it felt good, the sudden crack in the muscles of his shoulders, that told him he was alive.

Julia came in, evenings, said she felt tired. She would sit in Auntie Hetty’s kitchen, lumped in the coat she wore in the street, sitting up against the raked fire.

What’s up, Julia? asked Auntie Hetty. You look that glum.

Nothing, said Julia. I feel tired.