“We shall get all right with the men by degrees, Cob,” he said. “That fellow was going to be nasty, but he smoothed himself down. You see now the use of a master being able to show his men how to handle their tools.”
“Yes,” I said, laughing; “but that was not all. Pannell would have gone if it had not been for one thing.”
“What was that?” he said.
“You began petting his kitten, and that made him friends.”
I often used to go into the smithy when Pannell was at work after that, and now and then handled his tools, and he showed me how to use them more skilfully, so that we were pretty good friends, and he never treated me as if I were a spy.
The greater part of the other men did, and no matter how civil I was they showed their dislike by having accidents as they called them, and these accidents always happened when I was standing by and at no other time.
For instance a lot of water would be splashed, so that some fell upon me; a jet of sparks from a grindstone would flash out in my face as I went past; the band of a stone would be loosened, so that it flapped against me and knocked off my cap. Then pieces of iron fell, or were thrown, no one knew which, though they knew where, for the place was generally on or close by my unfortunate body.
I was in the habit of frequently going to look down in the wheel chamber or pit, and one day, as I stepped on to the threshold, my feet glided from under me, and, but for my activity in catching at and hanging by the iron bar that crossed the way I should have plunged headlong in.
There seemed to be no reason for such a slip, but the men laughed brutally, and when I looked I found that the sill had been well smeared with fat.
There was the one man in the grinders’ shop, though, whom I have mentioned, and who never seemed to side with his fellow workers, but looked half pityingly at me whenever I seemed to be in trouble.