



Produced by David Widger






"SURLY TIM."

A LANCASHIRE STORY.

By Frances Hodgson Burnett

Copyright, 1877


"Sorry to hear my fellow-workmen speak so disparagin' o' me? Well,
Mester, that's as it may be yo' know. Happen my fellow-workmen ha' made
a bit o' a mistake--happen what seems loike crustiness to them beant so
much crustiness as summat else--happen I mought do my bit o' complainin'
too. Yo' munnot trust aw yo' hear, Mester; that's aw I can say."

I looked at the man's bent face quite curiously, and, judging from its
rather heavy but still not unprepossessing outline, I could not really
call it a bad face, or even a sulky one. And yet both managers and
hands had given me a bad account of Tim Hibblethwaite. "Surly Tim," they
called him, and each had something to say about his sullen disposition
to silence, and his short answers. Not that he was accused of anything
like misdemeanor, but he was "glum loike," the factory people said, and
"a surly fellow well deserving his nam