United States or Montenegro ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Rough, broad-speaking, broad-shouldered men from the Lancashire cotton-mills; shop assistants with polished boots, and some even with kid gloves and a silver-banded cane. Here and there was a farm-hand in corduroys and hob-nailed, cowdung-spattered boots, puffing at a broken old clay pipe, and speaking in the "Darset" dialect.
Nathanael unfastened the glass-door, not without annoyance; for, unlike his wife, his joy-tithe was not yet due. "What do you want, my good fellow?" "Some o' th' Harpers." "Indeed! Are you after work? You don't look like one of the clay-cutters. Where do you come from?" "I be Darset, I be; but I comed fra Carnwall."
Billy Caines a Darset man same as myself. Him and me was reg'lar pals out there, wasn't we, Bill?" "I d' 'low we was," responded Private Caines, after ceremoniously pumping Mrs. Baverstock's hand up and down. "We did fight side by side, and we was wounded side by side, and we was a-layin' side by side for weeks in the field hospital, wasn't us, Dick?"
You bean't he, I see. But you be th' old Squire's son, and I be Darset, I be!" Another bow the involuntary respect to the ancient county family from honest labour born upon its ancestral sod, and the man leaned exhausted against the ragged stem of one of the old vines. "Missus," he said, looking up hungrily at the lady this time "Missus, do'ee gie 'un a bit o' bread!"
Him an' me have been married now goin' on fifteen year, an' all I can say about en is as if I were free to choose again, I'd choose the same. "'Ah, I knowed he was good by the very looks of him. I am sure, says she, 'he must come of a very respectable family. So of course I did tell her as the Domenys was well known and respected in all the country round, and was real good old Darset stock.
"But there, Master Dick," said the old lady; "I suppose we be all Germans now so they do tell me, however; an' if we be no better nor furriners here in Darset, why I doan't know as't matters gertly wha' cwomes to us at all. But I will say things wor different in your feyther's time, Master Dick that they was. Ah doan't believe he'd ha' put up wi' this German business for a minute, that ah doan't."
Zoo wi'out any mwore ham-chammy we ageën raise our cyder cups to ee, wi' th' pious pray'r on our lips that Heaven ull prosper ee, an' we assure ee that Darset Men ull ever sheen as oone o' th' bright jools in yer Crown. I d' bide, az avoretime, an' vor all time, Thy Vaithful Sarvint,
"From where?" asked Agatha, puzzled by the provincialism, and attracted at once by the man's intelligent face, and by a keen, misery-stricken, hungry look, which she had truly called "wolfish." "I be comed fra the miners in Carnwall," reiterated the man, raising his voice threateningly. "They sent I back to Darset to see some o' th' Harpers." "You must go in, Agatha; it is cold.
Word Of The Day