Brightly had always supposed that celestial beings are modest. He only shook his head at that remark. He had seen little girls, and knew quite well what they were like. They didn't have golden skin and a glory about their heads, neither did they drop down suddenly before starving and persecuted beings, to give them half-crowns, and save them from their enemies.
"Asthma, rheumatics, and getting blind," he repeated, shattering the words with coughs. He hoped the angel might touch him and heal his infirmities if he told her all about them.
She only gave him the basket, and said: "You had better come in and rest. I don't like to hear you cough so. I hope you haven't been stealing anything?" she said reproachfully.
"I ain't done nothing—nothing serious," declared Brightly. "I was a-sitting on the heather, singing about Jesus and us belonging to 'en, when policeman comes a-shouting, there 'a be,' and I ran, your reverent. I was that mazed I didn't hardly know what I was doing. They'm after I now, and I ain't done nothing that I knows on. I was a-yetting my bread and cheese and singing. I warn't a-harming a living thing. I warn't a-harming not a butterfly, your reverent."
Boodles would have laughed had Brightly been a less pathetic object. She said she believed he was honest, bent to pat Ju, then took them both into the cottage and into the little room where old Weevil was preparing a long screed, to be addressed to some society, and headed: "An Inquiry into the Number of Earthworms mutilated annually by Agricultural Implements." He was very much astonished when he saw Brightly, but became as pitiful as the girl when he had heard the story.
"I am sure he speaks the truth," said Boodles for the defence.
"I don't care whether it's the truth or a lie. Another poor thing caught by the Brute," muttered Weevil. "We must help him to escape. We will keep him here until dark, and then he can creep away. It's what we are always doing, all of us—trying to creep away from the Brute."
Brightly seated himself in a reverential attitude, regarding poor old Weevil as a patriarch, a sort of modern Abraham who had pitched his tent in that part of the country for the benefit of the poor and friendless. He wondered if the patriarch was a prophet also, and could tell him if he would ever attain to the pony and cart; but he had not the courage to ask.
"What are those things in your basket?" said Weevil.
"Two rabbit-skins, sir. I makes my living out o' they. Least I tries to," added Brightly drearily.