Sorrell and Son by Warwick Deeping

Sorrell was crossing the Market Square, and he paused by the market cross to look back at the cathedral and its trees. He felt happy, most extraordinarily happy. It was not only the sudden, pleasant human relationship that had opened before him that had cheered him, but the feeling of self-congratulation. The fact that Roland should have offered him work had given a flick to his self-respect. What did the nature of the work matter? He was a hotel porter and he was a success as a hotel porter. He had put a plain and human back into the job, stuck to it in spite of pain and weariness and persecution, and someone had come and said--"You are the man."

He glanced at old Verity's shop and walked on. He was going to tell the boy, and to say to him--"I have been offered a better job," and he was immensely and absurdly proud of it. The afterglow--all yellow above the deep shadows of the old streets-- was the colour of his mood of exultation. Second porter at the Pelican at Winstonbury! The Palfrey menage done with. To work for a man for whom he felt respect and liking, and more than that!