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He had been a boy along with Morel, so that, while the two disliked each other, they more or less took each other for granted. But Alfred Charlesworth did not forgive the butty these public-house sayings.
Ah! it's cruel work, is the tommy shop." "How d'ye do neighbour Prance?" said a comely dame with a large white basket, "And how's your good man? They was saying at Belfy's he had changed his service. I hear there's a new butty in Mr Parker's field; but the old doggy kept on; so I always thought, he was always a favourite, and they do say measured the stints very fair.
"It comes to this," he continued, "Natur has her laws, and this is one; a fair day's wage for a fair day's work." "I wish you may get it," said Juggins, "with a harder stint every week and a shilling a day knocked off." "And what's to come to-morrow?" said Waghorn. "The butty has given notice to quit in Parker's field this day se'nnight. Simmons won't drop wages, but works half time."
How was that? The last night pa was boosed he was standing on the landing there bawling out for his boots to go out to Tunney's for to boose more and he looked butty and short in his shirt. Never see him again. Death, that is. Pa is dead. My father is dead. He told me to be a good son to ma. I couldn't hear the other things he said but I saw his tongue and his teeth trying to say it better.
All the earnings of each stall were put down to the chief butty, as contractor, and he divided the wages again, either in the public-house or in his own home. So that the children could fetch the money, school closed early on Friday afternoons. Each of the Morel children William, then Annie, then Paul had fetched the money on Friday afternoons, until they went themselves to work.
As I say, I did not know the man, but he might very well know me; he was, perhaps, some old schoolfellow, grown out of recollection by moonlight, and still willing to serve an old butty. This seemed the likeliest solution of the difficulty, and it made me very sad.
At two o'clock he looked at his watch, by the light of the green candle he was in a safe working and again at half-past two. He was hewing at a piece of rock that was in the way for the next day's work. As he sat on his heels, or kneeled, giving hard blows with his pick, "Uszza uszza!" he went. "Shall ter finish, Sorry?" cried Barker, his fellow butty. "Finish?
New machinery was brought from America, such as the miners had never seen before, great iron men, as the cutting machines were called, and unusual appliances. The working of the pits was thoroughly changed, all the control was taken out of the hands of the miners, the butty system was abolished.
This was exactly the case with the pits of Aberfoyle. Ten years before, the last butty had raised the last ton of coal from this colliery. The underground working stock, traction engines, trucks which run on rails along the galleries, subterranean tramways, frames to support the shaft, pipes in short, all that constituted the machinery of a mine had been brought up from its depths.
She had seventeen shillings a week from clubs, and every Friday Barker and the other butty put by a portion of the stall's profits for Morel's wife. And the neighbours made broths, and gave eggs, and such invalids' trifles. If they had not helped her so generously in those times, Mrs. Morel would never have pulled through, without incurring debts that would have dragged her down.
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