'Very well, Joyce, by all means. I have nothing particular to do, so I am quite at your service.' He sat down by the girl under the lee of the great stones. It was warm there and pleasant, leaning against the grey blocks of hoar antiquity and unknown use, stained orange and silvery white with lichen, and with white frosty moss like antlers of elfin deer filling the nooks in the stones. The ants were crawling over the moss in the sun; they were migrating and wore their wings for that one day. Turf was heaped up at the side of the cromlech, forming a rude bench. On this the two sat. As he took his place the thought came into Herring's head that far away in the dim prehistoric age, some such a savage as that which sat beside him had assisted when it was reared.
'It be lew (sheltered) here,' said Joyce; 'vaither hev took to sitting here mostly on a Sunday when he ain't wanted to the mine.'
'He leaves you very much alone now.'
'That he does. Vaither be much changed o' late. The vokes there ha' taught 'n to smoke, and they give 'n a bit o' backie now and then, and when he haven't got no backie, then he flips off this here moss, this black sort o' trade on the moorstones, and he smokes that.'
'A new sort of life for him,' said Herring.
'It amuses he,' answered the girl. 'He says he didn't know as Gorolmity had so many vules in the world. He says they be as plenty as stones on Dartmoor.'
'I dare say they are, and certainly those are fools who congregate about Ophir.'
'Vaither likes to hear mun talk, and go sifting and cradling and washing for the gold. It makes 'n laugh, it do.'
'Why, Joyce?'
'Why, because there bain't none of 'em knows where the gold comes from, and there bain't one of 'em as don't think himself as wise as Cosdon is big.'