"'What's thee want it for?" her asked.
"'Tisn' nothing doing down here,' I says, 'an' I wants to go to sea.'
"'I an't got no money,' the maid says.
"'Casn' thee get nort?' I asks, having begun, you see. I'd been goin' with her for nigh on two years.
"Her cried bitter at the thought o' me going, but her did get seven shillin's from a fellow servant. I told me mother—her cried tu'—an' off us started, going by train to Bristol and stopping the night at the Sailor's Rest. 'Twasn't bad, you know. They Restis be gude things. Dick, he woke in the morning wi' a swelled faace, but I didn' feel nort.
"Dick Yeo paid both our boat fares from Bristol to Cardiff. The steward—what us urned against aboard ship—recommended us to a lodging house in Adelaide Street, an' he giv'd me a note for a man at the Board o' Trade, sayin' we was Demshire fishin' chaps an' gude seamen.
"Well, us went to the lodging house an' gave in our bags an' took a room wi' fude [food] for two an' six a day—each, mind yu. Then us looked into a big underground room wer there was a lot o' foreigners gathered round a fire an' us didn' much like the looks o' that. So us went straight down to the docks an' tried to ship together on several sailing ships an' steamers. Some on 'em would on'y take me, an' some were down to sail at a future date, like, what our money wouldn't last out tu. I cude ha' got a ship, 'cause I had me Naval Reserve ticket, but nobody cuden't du wi' both on us—an' where one went t'other was to go tu, by agreement.
AT THE BOARD O' TRADE
"Us went back to the lodging house, into a sort o' kitchen in a cellar, where there was a 'Merican wi' a long white beard cooking, an' men drunk spewing, an' men lying about asleep like logs. The 'Merican, his beard looking so red as hell in the firelight, wer stirring some kind o' stew. Yu shade ha' see'd the faaces what the glow o' they coals shined on! An' the fude.... An' the tables an' plates.... I've a-gone short many a time in my day, but I'd never ha' touched muck like they offered to gie us there. Dick an' me crept up the staircase to bed wi' empty bellies thic night.
"Soon a'ter we was to bed, Dick says to me: 'Can 'ee feel ort yer Tony?'