Some years afterwards Crooks found himself at work in the same yard as his burly enemy, but time, which had made little difference to the man, had transformed the boy out of all recognition. Crooks asked him if he remembered the event.
"Yes; and if I came across that youngster to-day I'd break every bone in his body."
"I don't think you would, Jack," Crooks replied, preparing to take off his coat.
Then the carman understood.
In his third year at the smithy Will was getting six shillings a week, with something more than a penny an hour for overtime. Small though the wages were, they were very welcome at home; and it meant a great deal to his mother when she sacrificed more than half this amount in the lad's best interest.
She was as determined that her boys should learn a trade as that they should learn to read and write. She took Will away from the smithy and his six shillings a week, when she found he was not to be taught the business but to be merely a smiths' labourer, and she apprenticed him to the trade of cooper at a weekly wage of half a crown.
"The sacrifice of a few shillings a week," says Crooks, "which mother made in order that I should learn a trade was only one of the many things she did for me as a boy for which I have blessed her memory in manhood many times. I really don't know now how she managed to feed us all, after losing my three-and-six a week. I know that she always put up a good dinner in a handkerchief for me to take to work. It may have got smaller towards the end of the week, like many of the men's. I remember one Monday dinner-time flopping down on a saw-tub and opening my handkerchief as the foreman passed.
"'That looks a good meal to begin the week on,' he said. 'I see how it is;—
It's Monday plenty,
Tuesday some,