"I do see it," she said, "inside my mind, you know. I can see it all as plainly as I see these great cruel hills."
"Yes," said he, "that's just what they are—they're cruel. And the fields and woods is kind—like folks you're friends with."
She was charmed with the phrase. She talked to him, coaxing him to make new phrases. It was like teaching a child to walk.
He told her about his home. It was a farm in Kent—"red brick with the glorydyjohn rose growin' all up over the front door—so that they never opened it."
"The paint had stuck it fast," said he, "it was quite a job to get it open to get father's coffin out. I scraped the paint off then, and oiled the hinges, because I knew mother wouldn't last long. And she didn't neither."
Then he told her how there had been no money to carry on the fruit-growing, and how his sister had married a greengrocer at Buxton, and when everything went wrong he had come to lend a hand with their business.
"And now I takes the rounds," said he; "it's more to my mind nor mimming in the shop and being perlite to ladies."
"You're very polite to me," she said.
"Oh, yes," he said, "but you're not a lady—leastways, I'm sure you are in your 'art—but you ain't a regular tip-topper, are you, now?"
"Well, no," she said, "perhaps not that."