‘Show, boy! Show!’ said Dan, for the Downs seemed as bare as the palm of your hand.
Old Jim sighed, and trotted forward. Soon they spied the blob of Mr. Dudeney’s hat against the sky a long way off.
‘Right! All right!’ said Dan. Old Jim wheeled round, took his bone carefully between his blunted teeth, and returned to the shadow of the old barn, looking just like a wolf. The children went on. Two kestrels hung bivvering and squealing above them. A gull flapped lazily along the white edge of the cliffs. The curves of the Downs shook a little in the heat, and so did Mr. Dudeney’s distant head.
They walked toward it very slowly and found themselves staring into a horse-shoe-shaped hollow a hundred feet deep, whose steep sides were laced with tangled sheep-tracks. The flock grazed on the flat at the bottom, under charge of Young Jim. Mr. Dudeney sat comfortably knitting on the edge of the slope, his crook between his knees. They told him what Old Jim had done.
‘Ah, he thought you could see my head as soon as he did. The closeter you be to the turf the more you see things. You look warm-like,’ said Mr. Dudeney.
‘We be,’ said Una, flopping down. ‘And tired.’
‘Set beside o’ me here. The shadow’ll begin to stretch out in a little while, and a heat-shake o’ wind will come up with it that’ll overlay your eyes like so much wool.’
‘We don’t want to sleep,’ said Una indignantly; but she settled herself as she spoke, in the first strip of early afternoon shade.
‘O’ course not. You come to talk with me same as your father used. He didn’t need no dog to guide him to Norton Pit.’
‘Well, he belonged here,’ said Dan, and laid himself down at length on the turf.