“What have you been doing?”
“Nowt,” he said; and he brought down his hammer with a tremendous bang as if he meant to make a full stop at the end of his sentence.
“Then why are you a bad one?”
He looked at me, then out of the window, then front the door, and then back at me.
“I’m going to Lunnon to get work,” he said.
“No, don’t; we like you—you’re such a good steady workman. Why are you going?”
“Don’t like it,” he said. “Man can’t do as he pleases.”
“Uncle John says he can’t anywhere, and the masters are the men’s servants here.”
“Nay, lad,” he whispered as he hammered away. “Men’s worse off than the masters. Wuckman here hev to do what the trade tells him, or he’d soon find out what was what. Man daren’t speak.”
“For fear of getting into trouble with his mates?”