I bared my head, and stood hat in hand looking after her as she
rode away up the hill. Then I took my treasure and put it in a
nest of cool dewy grass under the hedge. Ecce ancilla Domini.
My next visitor was a fellow-worker on his way to a job at the
cross-roads. He stood gazing meditatively at my heap of stones.
"Ow long 'ave yer bin at this job that y'ere in such a hurry?"
I stayed my hammer to answer--"Four months."
"Seen better days?"
"Never," I said emphatically, and punctuated the remark with a
stone split neatly in four.
The man surveyed me in silence for a moment; then he said slowly,
"Mean ter say yer like crackin' these blamed stones to fill 'oles
some other fool's made?"
I nodded.
"Well, that beats everything. Now, I 'AVE seen better days; worked
in a big brewery over near Maidstone--a town that, and something
doing; and now, 'ere I am, 'ammering me 'eart out on these blasted
stones for a bit o' bread and a pipe o' baccy once a week--it ain't
good enough." He pulled a blackened clay from his pocket and began
slowly filling it with rank tobacco; then he lit it carefully
behind his battered hat, put the spent match back in his pocket,
rose to his feet, hitched his braces, and, with a silent nod to me,
went on to his job.
Why do we give these tired children, whose minds move slowly, whose
eyes are holden that they cannot read the Book, whose hearts are
full of sore resentment against they know not what, such work as
this to do--hammering their hearts out for a bit of bread? All the
pathos of unreasoning labour rings in these few words.
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