I was wiping up some ink, and got some on my face.

I couldn't help." Mr Barnacle looked angry and impatient.
"This is no place for nonsense," said he.
"Really I couldn't help," I pleaded.
There must have been some traces of earnestness visible, I fancy, on my inky face, for I saw Mr Barnacle look at me curiously as I spoke, while there was the faintest perceptible twitch at the corners of his lips.
"Go and wash at once," he said, sternly.
I fled from his presence as if I had been a leper, and amid the merriment of my fellow-clerks sought the sink at the other end of the office and washed there as I had never washed before.
After much exertion, my countenance resumed something like its natural complexion, and the white skin faintly dawned once more on my fingers.
My collar and shirt-front were beyond cleaning, but at the end of my ablutions I was, at any rate, rather more presentable than I had been.
Then I returned refreshed in body and mind to Mr Barnacle, whom I found explaining to Smith his duties in the Import Department.

He briefly recapitulated the lecture for my benefit, and then dismissed us both under the charge of Mr Doubleday to our duties, and by the time one o'clock was reached that day, and I was informed I might go out for twenty minutes for my dinner, I was quite settled down as junior clerk in the Export Department of Merrett, Barnacle, and Company..