“I wur under-shepherd thur till I took to factory work. Look at them lambs thur!”
They looked out of the window. Beneath, the green fields came right up to the dead brick wall. Away, some fifty yards distant, stood an enormous pollard oak, its vast gnarled root coiled round just above the earth, forming a broad ledge about the trunk. Half a dozen lambs were chasing each other, frisking round and round the rim, glad in the summer sunshine.
“Look at um,” said the whilom shepherd, “an’ I be choked for aair.”
“Why not open the window?”
“He wunt open.”
They examined it; the sashes were shams, not made to open. Neither was there a fireplace; the man was poisoned with the exhalations from his own weak frame.
“This is dreadful,” said Geoffrey. “Is there no law—”
“Law enough,” said Felix, bitterly; “but who troubles to enforce it for the sake of—a navvy? Why are crowded places sinks of misery and crime? For want of a Master, like the colonel of a regiment. It makes me sigh for a despot.”
“I’d a’ smashed un fast enough,” said the shepherd, “if I’d a-dared; but thaay ud ’a turned me out into the street, an’ I couldn’t abear the workuss. Is ould Fisher dead yet, zur?”
St. Bees was busy with his penknife cutting away the putty, and did not for the moment answer. The pane came out speedily, and the breeze came in with a rush, and with it a bee that buzzed round and went forth again, and a scent of new-made hay, and the “Baa—maa” of the lambs, and behind it all the low roar of the railway and the factories.