The fair young man turned round and looked at Charley on hearing this; he noticed it.
“Yes, thank ye,” said he to the questioner, “nicely. It were a fight at first, but I’ve got my foot well in now.”
“London?” inquired an old labourer laconically, between the puffs of his pipe.
“Yes,” replied the lad.
“What trade?” asked a third.
“Carpentering,” said Charley. “I’m in a good firm now—City ways.”
There was a pause, and then the first speaker volunteered the information that “Farmer Benson ain’t come to no better mind ’bout that right o’ way, and ’ave took to drink wus nor ever,” and that he didn’t suppose “Farmer Chiswick’d give in neither.”
“I never knowed my father to give in,” said Charley, half sadly.
“No,” agreed the other, “if old folks weren’t so darned obstinate, there mightn’t be so much mischief in the world as what there is! It serve ’em right—it do!”
Charley looked up quickly. There seemed somehow to be more in this speech than it said; but the fellow who had spoken it slunk away and retired into the background, and again the lad felt as though many eyes were upon him; and he began to guess why: folk pitied him. He drank his glass in silence, and thought he would go and wait in the lanes till his time was up.