“Oh, aren’t they black! They might ha’ crept down th’ chimney. I never saw any like them before.” He described how he had reared two on the bottle, exciting Meg’s keen admiration by his mothering of the lambs. Then he went on to the peewits, harping on the same string: how they would cry and pretend to be wounded —“Just fancy, though!”— and how he had moved the eggs of one pair while he was ploughing, and the mother had followed them, and had even sat watching as he drew near again with the plough, watching him come and go —“Well, she knew you — but they do know those who are kind to them —”
“Yes,” he agreed, “her little bright eyes seem to speak as you go by.”
“Oh, I do think they’re nice little things — don’t you, Lettie?” cried Meg in access of tenderness.
Lettie did — with brevity.
We walked over the hills and down into Greymede. Meg thought she ought to go home to her grandmother, and George bade her go, saying he would call and see her in an hour or so.
The dear girl was disappointed, but she went unmurmuring. We left Alice with a friend, and hurried home through Selsby to escape the after-church parade.
As you walk home past Selsby, the pit stands up against the west, with beautiful tapering chimneys marked in black against the swim of sunset, and the head-stocks etched with tall significance on the brightness. Then the houses are squat in rows of shadow at the foot of these high monuments.
“Do you know, Cyril,” said Emily, “I have meant to go and see Mrs Annable — the keeper’s wife — she’s moved into Bonsart’s Row, and the children come to school — Oh, it’s awful! — they’ve never been to school, and they are unspeakable.”
“What’s she gone there for?” I asked.
“I suppose the squire wanted the Kennels — and she chose it herself. But the way they live — it’s fearful to think of!”
“And why haven’t you been?”
“I don’t know — I’ve meant to — but —” Emily stumbled. “You didn’t want, and you daren’t?”
“Perhaps not — would you?”
“Pah — let’s go now! — There, you hang back.”
“No, I don’t,” she replied sharply.
“Come on then, we’ll go through the twitchel. Let me tell Lettie.”
Lettie at once declared, “No!”— with some asperity. “All right,” said George. “I’ll take you home.”
But this suited Lettie still less.
“I don’t know what you want to go for, Cyril,” she said, “and Sunday night, and, everybody everywhere. I want to go home.”
“Well — you go then — Emily will come with you.”
“Ha,” cried the latter, “you think I won’t go to see her.” I shrugged my shoulders, and George pulled his moustache. “Well, I don’t care,” declared Lettie, and we marched down the twitchel, Indian file.
We came near to the ugly rows of houses that back up against the pit-hill. Everywhere is black and sooty; the houses are back to back, having only one entrance, which is from a square garden where black-speckled weeds grow sulkily, and which looks on to a row of evil little ash-pit huts. The road everywhere is trodden over with a crust of soot and coal-dust and cinders.
Between the rows, however, was a crowd of women and children, bare hands, bare arms, white aprons, and black Sunday frocks bristling with gimp. One or two men squatted on their heels with their backs against a wall, laughing. The women were waving their arms and screaming up at the roof of the end house.
Emily and Lettie drew back.
“Look there — it’s that little beggar, Sam!” said George.
There, sure enough, perched on the ridge of the roof against the end chimney, was the young imp, coatless, his shirt-sleeves torn away from the cuffs. I knew his bright, reddish young head in a moment. He got up, his bare toes clinging to the tiles, and spread out his fingers fanwise from his nose, shouting something, which immediately caused the crowd to toss with indignation, and the women to shriek again. Sam sat down suddenly, having almost lost his balance.
The village constable hurried up, his thin neck stretching out of his tunic, and demanded the cause of the hubbub.
Immediately a woman, with bright brown squinting eyes and a birthmark on her cheek, rushed forward and seized the policeman by the sleeve.
“Ta’e ’im up, ta’e ’im up, an’ birch ’im till ‘is bloody back’s raw,” she screamed.
The thin policeman shook her off, and wanted to know what as the matter.
“I’ll smosh ’im like a rotten tater,” cried the woman, “if I can lay ‘ands on ’im. ‘E’s not fit ter live nowhere where there’s decent folks — the thievin’, brazen little devil —” thus she went on.
“But what’s up!” interrupted the thin constable, “What’s up wi’ ’im?”
“Up — it’s ’im as ‘is up, an’ let ’im wait till I get ’im down. A crafty little —”
Sam, seeing her look at him, distorted his honest features, and overheated her wrath, till Lettie and Emily trembled with dismay.
The mother’s head appeared at the bedroom window. She slid the sash back, and craned out, vainly trying to look over the gutter below the slates. She was even more dishevelled than usual, and the tears had dried on her pale face. She stretched farther out, clinging to the window-frame and to the gutter overhead, till I was afraid she would come down with a crash.
The men, squatting on their heels against the wall of the ash-pit laughed, saying:
“Nab ’im, Poll — can ter see ’im-clawk ’im!” and then the pitiful voice of the woman was heard crying, “Come thy ways down, my duckie, come on — on’y come ter thy mother — they shanna touch thee. Du thy mother’s biddin’ now — Sam — Sam — Sam!” her voice rose higher and higher.
“Sammy, Sammy, go to thy mammy,” jeered the wits below. “Shonna ter come, shonna ter come to thy mother, my duckie — come on, come thy ways down.”
Sam looked at the crowd, and at the eaves from under which rose his mother’s voice. He was going to cry. A big gaunt woman, with the family steel comb stuck in her back hair, shouted, “Tha’ mun well bend thy face, tha’ needs ter scraight,” and, aided by the woman with the birthmark and the squint, she reviled him. The little scoundrel, in a burst of defiance, picked a piece of mortar from between the slates, and in a second it flew into fragments against the family steel comb. The wearer thereof declared her head was laid open and there was general confusion. The policeman — I don’t know how thin he must have been when he was taken out of his uniform — lost his head, and he too began brandishing his fists, spitting from under his sweep’s-brush moustache as he commanded in tones of authority:
“Now then, no more on it — let’s ‘a’e thee down here, an’ no more messin’ about!”
The boy tried to creep over the ridge of the roof and escape down the other side. Immediately the brats rushed round yelling to the other side of the row, and pieces of red-burnt gravel began to fly over the roof. Sam crouched against the chimney.
“Got ’im!” yelled one little devil “Got ’im! Hi — go again!” A shower of stones came down, scattering the women and the policeman. The mother rushed from the house and made a wild onslaught on the throwers. She caught one and flung him down. Immediately the rest turned and aimed their missiles at her. Then George and the policeman and I dashed after the young wretches, and the women ran to see