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"Good-day, sir," the stone-breaker made answer, hitching himself upon the sack he had put under his haunches, like one very ready for a conversation. There was a pause. The Rector did not know very well how to continue. He should, he knew, speak with some sense of colloquialism if he was to get on with this stonebreaker, a person for whom he had a certain removed sympathy.
I have attained my ideal: I am a roadmender, some say stonebreaker. Both titles are correct, but the one is more pregnant than the other. All day I sit by the roadside on a stretch of grass under a high hedge of saplings and a tangle of traveller's joy, woodbine, sweetbrier, and late roses.
"If I broke stones upon the highway for twelve hours a day, I might earn two shillings," he had said to Betty, on the previous day. "I could break stones well," holding out a big arm, "but fourteen shillings a week will do no more than buy bread and bacon for a stonebreaker." He was ordinarily rather silent and stiff in his conversational attitude towards his own affairs.
A stonebreaker was at work on an adjacent pile of flints, and when I alighted to examine the wreck, he nailed me with, 'Hoy, mister! Ye'd better leave thick thur car alone. The p'lice be comin' to tek un up zhortly. "I gathered from him that he had been told to keep an eye upon the car, but beyond having heard that the owners had met with an accident, he knew nothing.
"Pretty hard work this," ventured Nicholas. "Blanky hard," assented the stonebreaker. "Did you ever try the softening influence of beer?" asked Nickie, drawing a bottle from his pocket. "Well, I won't make yeh force it on me," said the stonebreaker.
Day after day there was an old Irish labourer, a stonebreaker, by the wayside, kneeling on a sack beside a great heap of stones, who gave her a cheery good-morrow as she passed. Once she went across the road and spoke to him. He had the face of a saint at his devotions. "You kneel there all day long," she said, "and as you kneel you pray, perhaps. Will you pray for me?
The Rector hitched up the white cuffs under his dark sleeves, swung his umbrella, and resumed his way, his lips puckered, a little feverish agitation seizing him. "A strange, down-hearted kind of a man," the stonebreaker said to himself, as he reached out for a lump of lime-stone and raised his hammer.
My plans concerning that gentleman, however, included an espionage that would record every detail of his conduct for some days to come. During the time I was with Maillot in the library, a number of Mr. Among these was Mr. Ulysses White of White, Stonebreaker & White Mr.
"Thank God" was local, and might lend itself to an interpretation that could not be approved. But the Rector imported something into the words that was a protection, something that was of the pulpit, that held a solemnity in its pessimism. "A fine day, indeed, glory be to God!" the stonebreaker made answer.
They divided the liquor like brothers dear, and the stonebreaker developed a sudden affection for Nicholas Crips, who after twenty minutes casual conversation, introduced his plea. "Must be splendid exercise for the liver, stoneknapping," he said. "I've been troubled with liver complaint lately. Living too high. Could you give a man a job?"
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