"He wass go to Je-sus College
For to try to get some knowledge——
Wass you ever see," etc. etc.
John Willie, itching to get away from Pannal, could not understand why anybody wanted to go to Jesus, Aberystwith, or any other College.
"I think it would be wiser
For to stay with Sister Liza——
Wass you ever see," etc. etc.
he would hum softly and (alas) contemptuously; and, since it was part of his chosen career to do so, Eesaac Oliver would very expressly forgive John Willie, getting into quite a Christian heat about it.
On the day after that homily on the Llanyglo sandhills, John Willie Garden went as usual to Railhead, and was enabled to delight his leather-belted and corduroyed friends there with a piece of information, hitherto secret, that he had from his father's table. This was that the line was to be opened in the following Spring by His Royal Highness the Duke of Snell. The announcement produced an astonishing effect. Not one in ten of the men either knew or cared what the enterprise was all about. They knew that the railway was a railway, but beyond that, none of its dividends being destined for their pockets, it was merely the job—"the" job, the job of the moment, the job not very different from the last job, and very, very like all the other jobs to come, until their living hands should become as stiff as the picks they plied, and the light of their eyes be extinguished as their own lanterns were extinguished at daybreak. But at the news that the Duke of Snell was to do his trick when they had finished theirs, they were innocently uplifted and delighted. This would be something to tell their grandchildren in the years to come! They would spit on their hands and work better all the afternoon for this!... In the meantime they discussed it when the great buzzer called them to their beef and bacon sandwiches, their chops and pickles and bread and cheese.
"So it's to be t' Dewk o' Snell!" one of them admired, with as much satisfaction as if he himself had had a tremendous leg-up in the world thereby; he was a West Riding navvy, whom twenty years of digging up the length and breadth of England had delocalised of everything save his powerful accent. "Well, now, I'd figgered it out 'at it'ld happen be t' Prince o' Wales mesen——"
Here struck in a Cardiff man, so lean that you would not have got another pennyweight of fat off him if you had fried him in his own frying-pan.
"Wass-n't it the Duke of Snell that mar-ried the Prin-cess Victorine?"
"Noa. That wor t' Dewk o' Flint," the Yorkshire navvy replied, with authority. "T' Dewk o' Snell wed t' youngest, t' Princess Alix. I knaw all t' lot on 'em; t' missis hed all their pic'ters o' biscuit-boxes; they reached from one end o' t' chimley-piece to t'other; ye couldn't ha' got a finger in between."
"Well, well," said the Cardiff man, an inquiring mind among many complacent ones, "it is curious, how lit-tle diff-ference it makes to us. The Prinss of Wales, say you? If I wait for the Prinss of Wales to give me ano-ther piece of this ba-con I wait a long time, whatever!... But prapss we get our in-vi-ta-tions soon," he added jocularly, taking an enormous bite of bread. "S'all you be there, John Willie?"