A lank and haggard youth, ricketty and smoke-dried, and black with his craft, was sitting on the threshold of a miserable hovel and working at the file. Behind him stood a stunted and meagre girl, with a back like a grasshopper; a deformity occasioned by the displacement of the bladebone, and prevalent among the girls of Wodgate from the cramping posture of their usual toil. Her long melancholy visage and vacant stare at Morley as he passed, attracted his notice, and it occurring to him that the opportunity was convenient to enquire something of the individual of whom he was in search, he stopped and addressed the workman:
“Do you happen to know friend a person here or hereabouts by name Hatton?”
“Hatton!” said the youth looking up with a grin, yet still continuing his labour, “I should think I did!”
“Well, that’s fortunate; you can tell me something about him?”
“Do you see this here?” said the youth still grinning, and letting the file drop from his distorted and knotty hand, he pointed to a deep scar that crossed his forehead, “he did that.”
“An accident?”
“Very like. An accident that often happened. I should like to have a crown for every time he has cut my head open. He cut it open once with a key and twice with a lock; he knocked the corner of a lock into my head twice, once with a bolt and once with a shut; you know what that is; the thing what runs into the staple. He hit me on the head with a hammer once. That was a blow! I fell away that time. When I came to, master had stopped the blood with some fur off his hat. I had to go on with my work immediately; master said I should do my stint if I worked till twelve o’clock at night. Many’s the ash stick he has broken on my body; sometimes the weals remained on me for a-week; he cut my eyelid open once with a nutstick; cut a regular hole in it, and it bled all over the files I was working at. He has pulled my ears sometimes that I thought they must come off in his hand. But all this was a mere nothin to this here cut; that was serous; and if I hadn’t got thro’ that they do say there must have been a crowner’s quest; though I think that gammon, for old Tugsford did for one of his prentices, and the body was never found. And now you ask me if I know Hatton? I should think I did!” And the lank, haggard youth laughed merrily, as if he had been recounting a series of the happiest adventures.
“But is there no redress for such iniquitous oppression,” said Morley, who had listened with astonishment to this complacent statement. “Is there no magistrate to apply to?”
“No no,” said the filer with an air of obvious pride, “we don’t have no magistrates at Wodgate. We’ve got a constable, and there was a prentice who coz his master laid it on, only with a seat rod, went over to Ramborough and got a warrant. He fetched the summons himself and giv it to the constable, but he never served it. That’s why they has a constable here.”
“I am sorry,” said Morley, “that I have affairs with such a wretch as this Hatton.”