"There's no telling. They give 'em such fancy names now-a-days," said another excursionist.
"Her be screaming cruel," said the stout commoner.
"I don't hear 'en," declared his wife. They got along very well together, those two, and made conversation easily, one by offering a statement, the other by differing.
"I du," said a young woman in a white frock, which was already showing about the waist some finger-impressions of her young man, who sat beside her. "She'm right underneath the carriage. Don't ye hear she, Ben?"
Ben gave a nervous smile, gulped, arranged his tie, which would keep slipping up to his chin, moistened his lips, then parted them to utter the monosyllable which was required. He heard the child screaming distinctly. Having stated as much, he proceeded to record his fingerprints accurately upon the young woman's waist.
A farmer from Inwardleigh, who had entered the train at Okehampton, and had slept peacefully ever since, woke up at that moment, looked out, saw the bare moor, remarked in a decided voice that he wouldn't live on Dartmoor for a thousand pounds, and went to sleep again. The stout commoner took up his parable and said—
"There be a little man got out now, and he'm poking about wi' a stick, trying to get the baby out. Did ever hear of trying to get a baby up wi' an ash-stick, woman?"
His wife replied that she had never heard of a baby getting underneath a train before, and she thought people ought to be ashamed of themselves getting drunk so early in the morning.
"Babies oughtn't to be took to the vair," said the young woman in the white frock. "I shan't tak' mine when I has 'em."
This remark caused young man Ben to smile nervously again.