"The skeleton of the feast," he remarked sadly.
Next day was dry, and we got plenty of food, food enough and to spare, and we made much progress on the journey north. Joe had an argument with a ploughman. This was the way of it.
Coming round a bend of the road we met a man with the wet clay of the newly turned earth heavy on his shoes. He was knock-kneed in the manner of ploughmen who place their feet against the slant of the furrows which they follow day by day. He was a decent man, and he told Moleskin as much when my mate asked him for a chew of tobacco.
"I dinna gang aboot lookin' for work and prayin' to God that I dinna get it, like you men," said the plougher. "I'm a decent man, and I work hard and hae no reason to gang about beggin'."
I was turning my wits upside down for a sarcastic answer, when Joe broke in.
"You're too damned decent!" he answered. "If you weren't, you'd give a man a plug of tobacco when he asks for it in a friendly way, you God-forsaken, thran-faced bell-wether, you!"
"If you did your work well and take a job when you get one, you'd have tobacco of your own," said the ploughman. "Forbye you would have a hoose and a wife and a dinner ready for you when you went hame in the evenin'. As it is, you're daunderin' aboot like a lost flea, too lazy to leeve and too afeard to dee."
"By Christ! I wouldn't be in your shoes, anyway," Joe broke in quietly and soberly, a sign that he was aware of having encountered an enemy worthy of his steel. "A man might as well expect an old sow to go up a tree backwards and whistle like a thrush, as expect decency from a nipple-noddled ninny-hammer like you. If you were a man like me, you would not be tied to a woman's apron strings all your life; you would be fit to take your turn and pay for it. Look at me! I'm not at the beck and call of any woman that takes a calf fancy for me."
"Who would take a fancy to you?"