She must have turned just behind him, for in a moment she drifted past his shoulder.
"Hello!" she said.
"Hello!" said Peter, but, in the moment it had taken to drag that up from under his astonishment, she had passed him; her laugh as she went brushed the tip of his youth like a swallow's wing.

It remained with him as a little, far spark; it seemed as if a dream was about to spin itself out from it.

He went around that way several times on his evening walks in hopes that he might meet her again.
As though the spark had lightened a little of the blank unrecognition with which the city met him, he was seen that day and in no unfriendly aspect by "our Mr.Croker" of Siegel Brothers.

The running gear of a great concern like the Household Emporium pressed, in the days of Peter's apprenticeship, unequally at times on its employees, and the galled spot of the canned goods department was Blinders the bundle boy.
His other name was Horace and he was chiefly remarkable for pimples which he seemed to think interesting, and for a state of active resentment against anybody who gave him anything to do.

The world for Horace was a dark jungle full of grouches and pulls and privilege and devious guile.
That the propensity which Peter had developed for inquiring every half hour or so if he hadn't got that done yet, could be nothing else but a cabal directed against Blinders' four dollars and a half a week, he was convinced.