"There be a set goes out every ten minutes, maybe, on this road, and every twenty minutes on the other, two o' ours to one o' theirs;" and he moved forward.
Jack let the door slam after him, went out and felt that it had shut firmly, and then resumed his seat in his niche. He whistled for a bit, and then his thoughts turned to the learning which he had determined firmly to acquire.
"I wish I'd ha' took to it afore," he said to himself. "What a sight o' time I ha' lost! I'll go over in my head all the lessons I can remember; and them as I doant know, and that's the best part, I reckon I'll look up when I get hoame. Every day what I learns fresh I'll go over down here. I shall get it perfect then, and it will pass the time away finely. I'll begin at oncet. Twice two is four;" and so Jack passed the hours of his first day in the pit, recalling his lessons, reproaching himself continually and bitterly with the time he had wasted, breaking off every ten minutes from his rehearsals to open the door for the train of corves going in empty and going out full, exchanging a few words each time with the drivers, all of whom were good-naturedly anxious to cheer up the new boy, who must, as they supposed, be feeling the loneliness of his first day in the pit keenly. Such was by no means the case with Jack, and he was quite taken by surprise when a driver said to him, "This be the last train this shift."
"Why, it bean't nigh two o'clock, surely?" he said.
"It be," the driver said; "wants ten minutes, that's all."
Soon the miners began to come along.
"Hullo, Jack!" Bill Haden's voice said. "Be'st still here. Come along of me. Why didst stop, lad? Thou canst always quit thy post when the first man comes through on his way out. Hast felt it lonely, lad?"
"Not a bit, dad."
"That's strange too," Bill said. "Most young boys finds it awful lonely o' first. I know I thowt that first day were never coming to an end. Weren't frighted at t' dark?"
"I thought it was onnatural dark and still the first ten minutes," Jack admitted honestly; "but arter the first set o' corves came along I never thawt no more about the dark."