"I'll go," cried George.
"And I too," echoed Tommy Musgrove, a fellow-workman, quite carried away by George's enthusiasm.
Now they went to Robin's school three evenings a week. I do not know how it was with Tommy, but old Robin never had a better scholar than George; indeed, he soon out-learned his master. His schooling cost him threepence a week, and, poor as it was, put into his hand the two keys of knowledge, reading and writing.
These mastered, he longs to use them. Andrew Robertson opens an evening school nearer than Welbottle, and Andrew proposes to teach arithmetic, a branch George is anxious to grapple with next. "And he took to figurin' wonderful," said Master Andrew, speaking of his new scholar, who soon left his class-mates far behind. And no wonder. Every spare moment to George was more precious than gold-dust, and was used accordingly. When not on duty he sits by his engine and works out his sums. No beer-shop enticed him to its cups. No cock-fight tempted him to be its spectator. He hates everything low and vulgar.
Andrew was proud of his pupil, and when George removed to another pit the old schoolmaster shifted his quarters and followed him. His books did not damage his interest in business. Was the plugman going to stay plugman? No. Bill Coe, a friend of his, advanced to a brakeman, offered to show George all about the machinery. The other workmen objected. One man stopped the working of the engine when George took hold of it, "for," he cried angrily, "Stephenson can't brake, and is too clumsy ever to learn."
A brakeman has charge of an engine for raising coal from a pit. The speed of the ascending coal, brought up in large hazel-wood baskets, was regulated by a powerful wooden brake, acting on the rim of the fly-wheel, which must be stopped just when the baskets reach the settle-board where they are to be emptied. Brakemen were generally chosen from experienced engine-men of steady habits; and in spite of the grumbling of older colliers, envious perhaps of his rise, it was not long before George learned, and was appointed brakeman at the "Dolly pit." This was in 1801.
