“Dallybuttons! To see that ancient woman! When I beginned to talk, her dropped her knitting, as if there was a spider in it, an’ sat up an’ stared out of her bead-black eyes. Though ’twas a fiery day, I went so cold as a frog all down my spine to see her glaze so keen.
“‘Go on,’ she said in a funny old voice, ‘go on, young man, will ’e? Tell about where you comed from, please.’
“There! it did sound mighty familiar to hear her, an’ no mistake!
“‘My heart! You’m West Country too!’ I cried out.
“Her nodded, but her couldn’t speak another word.
“‘Go on, go on talking to her,’ the man said.
“So I sailed on.
“‘You must know I runned off to sea, ma’am, from a farm down Dartymoor way. ’Tis a terrible coorious sort of a place, an’ calls for hard work if you wants to thrive there. Roots will do if you’m generous with stable stuff an’ lime, but corn be cruel shy, except oats. I was a lazy boy, I’m afraid, an’ got weary of being hit about like a foot-ball, though I deserved it; an’ I thought to mend my life by running away. The things I’ve seed! Lor’-amercy! ’tis a wonnerful world, sure enough, ma’am.’
“‘So it be,’ she said, very soft, ‘an’ a wonnerful God made it, my dear. Go on, go on about the Dartymoors, will ’e?’
“‘Well,’ I said, ‘’tis a gert, lonesome land, all broke up wi’ rocky tors, as we call ’em, an’ clitters o’ granite where the foxes breed, an’ gashly bogs, in which you’m like to be stogged if you don’t know no better. An’ the cots be scattered over the face of it, an’ the little farms do lie here an’ there in the lew corners, wi’ their new-take fields around about. There’s a smell o’ peat in the air most times, an’ it do rise up very blue into the morning light. An’ the great marshes glimmer, an’ the plovers call in spring; an’ the ponies, wi’ their little ragged foals, go galloping unshod over the Moor. Then the rivers an’ rills twinkle every way, like silver an’ gold threads stretching miles an’ miles; an’ come summer the heather blows an’ the great hills shine out rosylike an’ butivul; an’—oh, my old dear—oh, ma’am—’ I says, breaking off, ‘doan’t ’e—doan’t ’e sob so—doan’t ’e take on like that, for I wouldn’t bring a wisht thought to ’e for money.’