“I d’no’. Got on his Sunday clothes, whoever he be. Don’t call him good-looking, though. Big awk’ard chap in a boot. He’d always be in the way. He’s a ’venturer, that’s what he is. Whose money’s he going to chuck down a mine?”
“What a chap you are, Tom Jennen! What should we mining folk do if it wasn’t for the ’venturers? We must have metal got up, and somebody’s obliged to speck’late in mines.”
“Speck’late in mines, indeed,” said the other, contemptuously. “Why don’t they put their money in boots or nets, so as to make money out of mack’rel or pilchar’?”
“Ah, for the boots to go down and drown the poor lads in the first storm, and the nets to be cut and swept away.”
“Well, that’s better than chucking the money down a hole in the ground.”
“Hey, Tom, you don’t know what’s good for others, so don’t set up as a judge,” and the speaker, a short, lame, very thick-set man, in a rough canvas suit, stained all over of a deep red, showed his white teeth in a pleasant smile, which seemed like sunshine on his rough, repellent face.
“Maybe I do; maybe I don’t. I say I don’t call him a good-looking chap.”
“Just as if you could tell whether a man’s good-looking or not, Tom Jennen. That’s for the women to do.”
“Ha—ha—ha! yes. Bess Prawle says you’re the plainest man she ever see.”
The miner flushed scarlet, and an angry light flashed from his eyes, but he seemed to master the annoyance, and said cheerfully,—