"Surly Tim" by Frances Hodgson Burnett

In a Lancashire factory, a young owner is drawn to the man everyone calls Surly Tim, a silent, blunt worker whom others dismiss as harsh and unfriendly. Looking closer, he discovers a hidden tenderness: Tim quietly protects the weakest children in the mill and carries himself with the burden of unspoken sorrow. One night in a churchyard, beside two graves, the truth begins to emerge. Tim is not bitter by nature, but a man shaped by love, loss, and a grief so deep it has made him seem hard to the world. As Tim tells his story, the novel unfolds into a powerful tale of working-class life, faith, and redemption. He recalls Rosanna Brent, a modest factory girl whose first marriage ended in abandonment, and how shared suffering grew into devotion. Their brief happiness is blessed by the birth of little Wee Wattie, but tragedy strikes when the child dies in Tim's arms. Worse follows when Rosanna's first husband, long believed dead, returns and claims her away under the law. In the end, with death and faith drawing the lovers toward reunion, Tim's final accident becomes a quiet release, as he imagines wife and child waiting beyond pain and separation. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.