"What be yew doing?" cried Thomasine in great fear. "It bain't yourn."
Brightly did not hear her. He knew at last what it was like to jog along the lane in a little pony-cart, and for five precious minutes he was in dreamland. In that short space of time he completed the allotted span of human existence. He was returning to the littlie cottage in the midst of the potato-patch, after a day of successful work. The cart behind was piled high with rabbit-skins, and in her own little corner Ju was sitting, fat and content. Brightly put up his ridiculous head and whistled "Jerusalem the Golden" for the last time. Then he got down, tied up the pony to another gatepost, and tramped through the mud with Thomasine.
In the town they passed a window where a notice was displayed: "Men wanted," and the girl drew his attention to it, but Brightly only coughed. The dream had faded and he had returned to realism. Men were wanted to dig foundations, build houses, work in stone, hairy-armed men who could lift granite, not a poor creeping thing who had hardly the strength to strangle a fluttering fowl.
They went through the town, up the long hill on the other side, and near a quarry of red stone they stopped.
"It be the way to Plymouth," Brightly said.
"Thankye kindly," said Thomasine. "Be yew going back?"
"Ees; I be going back," he answered.
"Be yew going far?"
"A bit o' the way towards Meldon."
"Yew ha' got no money," she said pityingly.