English fiction -- 19th century; Labor unions -- Fiction
This simple cry went through many a rough heart; a loud gulp or two were
heard soon after, and more than one hard and coaly cheek was channeled
by sudden tears. But now a burly figure came rolling in; they drew back
and silenced each other.--“The Doctor!” This was the remarkable person
they called Jack Doubleface. Nature had stuck a philosophic head, with
finely-cut features, and a mouth brimful of finesse, on to a corpulent
and ungraceful body, that yawed from side to side as he walked.
The man of art opened with two words. He looked up at the white cloud,
which was now floating away; sniffed the air, and said, “Gunpowder!”
Then he looked down at Little, and said, “Ah!” half dryly, half sadly.
Indeed several sentences of meaning condensed themselves into that
simple interjection. At this moment, some men, whom curiosity had drawn
to Henry's forge, came back to say the forge had been blown up, and “the
bellows torn limb from jacket, and the room strewed with ashes.”
The doctor laid a podgy hand on the prisoner's wrist: the touch was
light, though the fingers were thick and heavy. The pulse, which had
been very low, was now galloping and bounding frightfully. “Fetch him a
glass of brandy-and-water,” said Dr. Amboyne. (There were still doctors
in Hillsborough, though not in London, who would have had him bled on
the spot.)
“Now, then, a surgeon! Which of you lads operates on the eye, in these
works?”
A lanky file-cutter took a step forward. “I am the one that takes the
motes out of their eyes.”
“Then be good enough to show me his eye.”
The file-cutter put out a hand with fingers prodigiously long and thin,
and deftly parted both Little's eyelids with his finger and thumb, so as
to show the whole eye.
“Hum!” said the doctor, and shook his head.
He then patted the sufferer all over, and the result of that examination
was satisfactory. Then came the brandy-and-water; and while Henry's
teeth were clattering at the glass and he was trying to sip the liquid,
Dr. Amboyne suddenly lifted his head, and took a keen survey of the
countenances round him. He saw the general expression of pity on the
rugged faces. He also observed one rough fellow who wore a strange wild
look: the man seemed puzzled, scared, confused like one half awakened
from some hideous dream. This was the grinder who had come into the
works in place of the hand Cheetham had discharged for refusing to grind
cockney blades.
“Hum!” said Dr. Amboyne, and appeared to be going into a brown study.
But he shook that off, and said briskly, “Now, then, what was his crime?
Did he owe some mutual aid society six-and-four-pence?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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