The Clock Read Online Free PDF

told to be hungry.
    They brought us our breakfast at the mill—bread, cheese, and hot tea that they carried over from the lodging house where the boys ate. But we were supposed to get our own dinners at noon. A lot of girls lived right in the village, like Hetty, and could scoot home for dinner. But the ones like me, who lived out on farms, didn’t have time to scoot home, and brought our dinners in dinner baskets—cold pork, cold pie, cheese, bread, apples. They sent over a boy from the lodging house kitchen with tea to go with our dinners.
    The boy’s name was Tom Thrush. He was about fourteen but small and looked half his age. Tom was chosen for the job because he had got half his hand clawed off by a carding machine the year before. Some wool had got stuck and he had reached into the machine to grab it, but the machine had grabbed him instead. It mangled all his fingers so bad, they had to cut them off, and part of his thumb too. All he had now was a stump of a hand and a stub of a thumb. He couldn’t do regular work anymore, but he had enough of a hand to sweep, and carry the tea buckets. Tom wasn’t the only one who’d lost part of himself in a machine in that mill. There were a dozen of them with a finger gone, a toe off, an eye out, where they’d had an accident.
    We were all mighty glad to see Tom Thrush come around, for he was saucy and cheerful and would say anything. When he came around we usually asked him some kind of question, just to get him talking. I was mighty curious to know what it had been like to be an orphan boy in New York. One rainy day when he came with the tea for noontime dinner I asked, “Tom, did they make you go to school down in New York?”
    â€œThey would have, if they could have catched me.”
    Because of the rain Hetty’d brought her dinner. “Don’t you want to learn things?” Hetty said.
    He began to ladle out our tea. “Oh, I wouldn’t mind learnin’ things if there wasn’t no work to it. I wouldn’t mind it if they could just ladle it into you the way I ladle out the tea. But there’s too much blame work to it. I mean, scratchin’ away at the slate to learn your letters, and memorizing whole stacks of tables. Who cares what twelve times anything is? I never had twelve of anything in my life, except strokes from Hoggart’s birch. I wasn’t about to multiply them if I could help it.”
    â€œYou’d better stop talking so much and get our tea poured,” Hetty said. “Mr. Hoggart will give it to you good if he catches you standing around and gossiping.”
    He winked again. “I ain’t scared of old Hoggart. I seen goblins that make old Hoggart look like nothin’ at all.”
    â€œThere isn’t any such thing as goblins,” I said.
    â€œThat’s what you think,” he said. “I seen one in New York one night on Water Street that was as big as a horse, with fire comin’ out of its eyes and teeth like a set of knives. You’d believe in goblins, all right, if you’d seen that one. Of course, you don’t see one like that every day. They’re mighty scarce, that kind, and a good thing too.”
    I laughed. You couldn’t help but being cheerful with Tom Thrush, once you got used to that stump of a hand. “Well, I don’t know about goblins, but I heard you hollering like a dozen cats when Mr. Hoggart thrashed you for stealing that pie out of the kitchen.”
    â€œI didn’t deserve no thrashing neither, for it was the worst pie I ever stole. It warn’t fit to eat—I give most of it to the pigs.”
    â€œYou better pray he doesn’t catch you again. Next time he’ll take some skin off your back.”
    â€œPrayin’ ain’t much use with old Hoggart. He don’t hold with church much.”
    â€œI thought Colonel Humphreys made everybody at the mill go to church,” Hetty Brown