Item 2 - Untitled short story

6 single sheets, fastened together

(Undated. The paper is watermarked 1869.)

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Transcript

I can remember very little of my early life, before I came to work at the Shop. It all seems to me to be embodied in one picture; my mother mending stockings outside the door of our cottage, which was on a slope, with fir trees behind it and a pond just in front. I was making a toy boat to sail in the pond, and trying to keep off the dog, who divided his time between interrupting me and running after the ducks. I was always fond of making models of things, and the day after I came to the Shop I made a toy duck which waddled about and quacked. Of course I never made that sort of thing before, because I had only a penknife; but here in the Shop we have the most beautiful tools and the workmen are very clever and kind, and will make any of the accessory parts for me. What I object to is, that they won’t talk to me because they are too busy, all except Peter; but then he is a very superior man. He told me all his history, and a most interesting one it is; how he was very unhappy in his childhood, and his father beat him and one day drove him out of the house with a crow-bar; and he remembers the scene quite vividly, his little sister crying in the passage and the snow all over the ground and the policeman going away round the corner. And then afterwards he was married, and his wife was killed by a railway accident; it is beautiful to hear him describe the piling of the carriages, and the horrible attidudes of the people, and the crowd that seemed to have sprung up out of the ground instantaneously to help them. Peter came to the Shop after I had been there some time; but neither of us could ever exactly remember how we came or what made us come. We asked the Master about it one day, but he only smiled and said “Why, do you want to go away?” and of course we said “no”, for nothing can be more delightful than to make machines all day long. I would not leave the shop for anything, but it seems to me that it would be even nicer if I could have my bench in front of the cottage and shew my mother how the machines get on. The Master seemed quite pleased, though, that we had asked him the question; he wanted to know which of us had started it. Now it was I that had suggested it to Peter, so he patted me on the head and shewed me how to make a Parrot that could talk and open his cage and that would bite everyone else’s finger. The making of this parrot amused me for some days; and when he was finished I wanted of course to see him bite somebody’s finger. Peter knew all about it and would not give his hand to the bird (he is a very superior man, Peter) so I went to one of the other men, who always makes eyes for us, and who had in fact made my Parrot’s eyes, by the Master’s orders. He does them very well, so that they follow you as you move about. I said “look at my nice bird, Thomas; scratch his head for him and see what he’ll do”. To my surprize, Thomas took no notice whatever of the bird, but immediately set to work on another pair of parrot’s eyes. “That fellow has more sense than I thought” said I to myself; “he is generally a mere fool, and minds nothing but his work.” It then occurred to me that I might have a model hand made and let the bird bite that. So I went to old Abraham who always does our right hands for us, and asked him to make me one. He had just made a beauty that was part of a new patent cork-extracting machine and held a corkscrew. The old man heard my request in silence and set to work at once. He is a very quick workman and I had not long to wait for my hand. It was a beautifully-shaped little plump hand, like a woman’s, with dimple on the back of it. So I took it by the wrist and held it up to my bird. To my intense delight the bird seized viciously on the forefinger. The whole hand was convulsed, and before I could pull it away it had caught the bird by the head and wrung its neck!

“Well” I said to Peter “I never suspected old Abraham of being such a wag.”

“It’s exactly like the one that holds the corkscrew” said Peter. Peter of course has had a good deal of experience; and then he remembers so much of his past life.

However I went to old Abraham and upbraided him. “That’s a fine trick you served me, Master Abraham,” I said “see if I don’t pay you out some day.” The old man said nothing, but immediately began to work again. Before very long he had constructed a third hand on exactly the same pattern.

[The writing ends half-way down a page.]