Father seeming disposed to "hull" one of the moulds at them, they all
hastened away to the clay mill--a machine like a great churn bound with
many strong iron hoops and with a thumper or plunger therein, to which a
long wooden bar was attached, harnessed to one end of which was another
blindfolded skeleton of a horse, which still retained its skin and
vitality, and went round and round despondently, as if under the
impression that it was going straight forward; but a sharp jerk of the
head seemed to say from time to time: "It doesn't matter; it will not be
for long."
At the bottom of the great mill, in a gloomy hole, was a clayey man in a
kind of rough apron, and armed with a piece of wire two feet long, whose
ends were twisted round a couple of pieces of wood to form handles.
As the mill turned, the well-mixed clay was forced through the bottom in
a mass some ten inches in diameter, which from time to time the man
dexterously cut through with his wire, and passed the pieces to the
children who came for fresh supplies.
One took the heavy fat lump, and hugged it to its breast, making a mould
in the top for its little chin.
Another had it dabbed upon its curly head; another bore it upon the
shoulder, leaving therein the print of the ear; but the favourite way
seemed to be to hug it to the breast back to the shed, where mother
seized it and went on making her brown loaves.
Father, whose external machinery consisted of some water, some dry,
sandy earth, and a little oblong box the shape of the brick, seized the
brown loaves his wife passed to him, gave them a dexterous dab which
forced them into the mould, scraped off the top level with the sides,
pushed it along on a board, raised the mould, and left there a soft clay
brick.
Then with regular puffs the process was repeated again and again, while
a man with a strange-shaped barrow removed the new soft bricks and bore
them away.
At the first sight it seemed as if the babe Jane Glyne had brought had
fallen amongst savages, but they were English fellow-creatures, living--
existing rather--not so very far from the centre of civilisation, and
bricks are in great demand.
As the work went on in its muddy monotony, an evil-looking, long-jawed
dog, the very opposite of the hound in the legend who slew the wolf to
save his master's child, came slinking and sniffing about the sheds. He
was a lean, starving, wolfish, mangy cur, with reddish glaring eyes,
always on the watch for kicks and blows. He would have been a big dog
had he been fed, but want of food appeared to have produced a bad crop
of hair upon his skin, and given him a thin shadowy look even to his
head, which seemed to have been starved into a snarl and a set of teeth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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