"A' richt," said Robert, as he looked at the narrow platform, with its weak, inadequate railing, which could hardly prevent anyone from falling down on to the wagon track, some fifteen or twenty feet below on one side, or on to the moving "scree" on the other.
"Weel, mind an' no' let any stanes gang past, for there are aye complaints comin' in aboot dirty coals. If ye dinna work an' keep oot the stanes, you'll get the sack," and he said this as if he meant to convey to them that he was the sole authority on the matter.
He was an old man, and Robert, as he looked at him, wondered if he had ever laughed. "Auld Girnie" they called him, because of his habit of always finding fault with everything and everybody, for no one could please him. His mouth seemed to be one long slit extending across his face, showing one or two stumps sticking in the otherwise toothless gums, and giving him the appearance of always "grinning."
The women workers' appearance jarred upon Robert. So far women to him had always been beings of a higher order, because he had always thought of them as being like his mother. But here they were rough and untidy, dressed like goblins in dirty torn clothes, with an old dirty sack hanging from the waist for an overall. Instinctively Robert felt that this was no place for women. One of them, who worked on the opposite side of the scree from Robert—a big, strong, heavily-built young woman of perhaps twenty-five—in moving forward tore her petticoat, which caught in the machinery, and made a rent right up above her knee.
"Ach, to hell wi' it," she cried in exasperation, as she turned up the torn petticoat, displaying a leg all covered with coal grime, which seemed never to have been washed.
"Is that no' awfu'? Damn my soul, I'll hae to gang hame the nicht in my sark tail," and she laughed loudly at her sally.
"I'll put a pin in it, it'll do till I gang hame," she added, and she started to pin the torn edges together. But all day the bare leg shone through the torn petticoat, and rough jokes were made by the men who worked near by—jokes which she seemed to enjoy, for she would hold up the torn garment and laugh with the others.
The women and boys never seemed to heed the things that filled Robert and Mysie with so much amazement. The two children bent over the swinging tables as the coal passed before them. They eagerly grabbed at the stones, flinging them to the side with a zeal that greatly amused the older hands.
"Ye'll no' keep up that pace lang," said one woman. "Ye'll soon tire, so ye'd better take it easy."
"Let them alone," broke in the old man, who had a penny a day more for acting as a sort of gaffer. "Get on wi' yer own work, an' never mind them."