Is there any strain to the iron-work ?" "Lor' a mercy, young missus!" he answered, gruffly, being by no means a polished man, "where did you ever hear of ironwork?
Needles and pins is enough for you.

Now don't you go and make no mischief." "I have no idea what you mean," I answered.

"If you have been careless, that is no concern of mine." "Careless, indeed! And the way I works, when others is a-snorin' in their beds! I might just as well do nort, every bit, and get more thanks and better wages.

That's the way of the world all over.

Come Saturday week, I shall better myself." "But if it's the way of the world all over, how will you better yourself, unless you go out of the world altogether!" I put this question to Martin with the earnest simplicity of the young, meaning no kind of sarcasm, but knowing that scarcely a week went by without his threatening to "better himself." And they said that he had done so for seven years or more.
"Don't you be too sharp," he replied, with a grim smile, partly at himself, perhaps.