Fact'ry 'Ands by Edward Dyson

FEATHERS, the packer, owed his name to a strange set of side-whiskers he once grew. Over these the feathery paper-dust collected till they looked like the wings of an adolescent gosling. He soon wearied of the nick-name, and shaved off his fluff, thinking the insult would pass with it. He was mistaken. The sobriquet of the foreman, Fuzzy Ellis, had a similar origin. His dead-looking, reddish hair was as fine as tow; it was always distracted, and in it the fibrous dust gathered so thickly that every jerk of his head produced a miniature dust storm.

Fuzzy was a queer bird. Besides being long and lank, he had a prematurely withered appearance. The white apron that enveloped him gave him something of the aspect of a wilted candle. His eye had a hunted look that corresponded with the distraction of his hair; his pinched face might have been put on his bones with a palette-knife and had the sallow livery of Spats' factory. It was always moist, as with trepidation, and from it oozed driblets of whiskers. He was the dustiest man in the world, and gaunt with everlasting worry. Fuzzy could not be imagined apart from the factory. He was first to come in the morning, last to leave at night. Nobody in the firm recollected his beginning. It was vaguely surmised that he was born in the factory and nourished on its insidious dust and the paste and gum that over-ran the place and caked on everything. He was regarded as a fixture; that he had friends or relations was never dreamed of-he was hardly credited with a soul.