“Now, my boy, I want you to tell me the truth,” the inspector said, or shouted, bending close to the boy's ear to make him hear. “How old are you?”
“Fourteen,” Johnny lied, and he lied with the full force of his lungs. So loudly did he lie that it started him off in a dry, hacking cough that lifted the lint which had been settling in his lungs all morning.
“Looks sixteen at least,” said the superintendent.
“Or sixty,” snapped the inspector.
“He's always looked that way.”
“How long?” asked the inspector, quickly.
“For years. Never gets a bit older.”
“Or younger, I dare say. I suppose he's worked here all those years?”
“Off and on—but that was before the new law was passed,” the superintendent hastened to add.
“Machine idle?” the inspector asked, pointing at the unoccupied machine beside Johnny's, in which the part-filled bobbins were flying like mad.