“Further on it’s quite dry,” he reassured her.
From the bridge they had a sudden view of a raw gash in the earth; and hundreds of men were crawling about in it, busy with minute operations, like flies in a great wound. There was a continuous rattle of picks, resembling a muffled shower of hail, and in the distance a tiny locomotive was leading a procession of tiny waggons.
“And those are the navvies!” she murmured.
The unspeakable doings of the navvies in the Five Towns had reached even her: how they drank and swore all day on Sundays, how their huts and houses were dens of the most appalling infamy, how they were the curse of a God-fearing and respectable district! She and Gerald Scales glanced down at these dangerous beasts of prey in their yellow corduroys and their open shirts revealing hairy chests. No doubt they both thought how inconvenient it was that railways could not be brought into existence without the aid of such revolting and swinish animals. They glanced down from the height of their nice decorum and felt the powerful attraction of similar superior manners. The manners of the navvies were such that Sophia could not even regard them, nor Gerald Scales permit her to regard them, without blushing.
In a united blush they turned away, up the gradual slope. Sophia knew no longer what she was doing. For some minutes she was as helpless as though she had been in a balloon with him.
“I got my work done early,” he said; and added complacently, “As a matter of fact I’ve had a pretty good day.”
She was reassured to learn that he was not neglecting his duties. To be philandering with a commercial traveller who has finished a good day’s work seemed less shocking than dalliance with a neglecter of business; it seemed indeed, by comparison, respectable.
“It must be very interesting,” she said primly.
“What, my trade?”
“Yes. Always seeing new places and so on.”