Herbert of the better days -The humiliation in the market place of our “Mr Smith”

“Herbert, tha chucklehead! Doesn't the know jug when tha sees it? Out o' road lad, and I'l] get it my son!”

 The auctioneer made a mock pass at his assistant's head, and the crowd roared appreciatively.  ALL market auctioneers have a butt ~~ it is part of their stock-in trade–  and generally the lad takes the mock abuse in good part, and enjoys playing up to it. But there was something about Herbert that made him stand out from the rest. He seemed too old for ‘the part, and his mistakes, far from being faked, were unmistakably genuine. He fumbled and hesitated with the china, mixing sets and pairing cups with obviously alien saucers, and as each error made him a target for further witticisms, he winced noticeably. 

I looked from him to the Chief Assistant,  a lithe young fellow who took the money with a confidential: "You've gov ‘a bargain, Madam", which sent housewives — home well pleased with their astuteness. He was enjoying himself, he was in his natural element, even his clothes looked happy ~ and I looked from his cheerful pullover to Herbert’s dingy black. That gave me the clue. Shabby as his suit was, it had once been the black coat and striped trousers of city wear. My eye passed to his scanty hair and spectacles, and I knew beyond a doubt that fate had never meant him to be "Herbert". He was “our Mr. Smith", and his real setting one of those cosy little offices that have been washed away in hundreds by the wave of depression, their Mr Smiths with them. An office of two rooms, and in the outer our Mr, Smith presiding, with a kindly typist to mother him and tactfully straighten his letters, and the smallest of juniors to run his errands. 

The auctioneer's voice broke on my musings:

 “...just the thing to give to the wife. Thou'rt married man, Herbert?" (He kept his broadest accent for repartee.)

 "Yes, worse luck." came the muttered reply. 

“Worse luck? Does wife bully thee? Eh, Herbert's wife ..." He launched forth on a cheerful inanity on his assistant's domestic affairs that brought further roars from the crowd. Behind his back the Little man, with set teeth, wrestled with paper and string in a vain effort to produce a tidy parcel from a teapot, & jugs and an assortment of plates. What lay behind that ‘worse luck‘? An unhappy marriage, or merely the burden of wife and hungry children that tied him to the slavery of a hateful job? His grim face troubled me, and I turned away, with the earnest hope that on the returning tide of prosperity poor Mr, Smith might float safely back to the haven of some tiny office where the deference of a junior, however small, might give him back his self-respect, and wipe out from his memory the humiliations of Herbert,