"Right you are! What's your address, and how do I get there? I'll go round and fix it up at once. Thompson said I could."
CHAPTER V
Carstairs and Darwen were on the same shift together, that is to say, they put in the same eight hours of the day at the works, day, evening, or night; and they shared diggings. They were about the same height and the same weight, they were both extremely interested in their work, both came from the south of England, and consequently both felt like strangers in a strange land. The first evening they were off, Darwen showed Carstairs round the town.
"That's the theatre," he said, with a smile, pointing to a dingy-looking building in a dingy-looking street. He watched Carstairs' face curiously as he spoke.
"I thought it was the prison," Carstairs answered, with his sober smile.
Darwen laughed outright. "This is the last place God made," he said.
They walked round the dingy main streets with their surging crowd of factory girls and factory men, flashily dressed in their evening attire, of poor physique and unhealthy looking.
"Is it possible," Carstairs asked, "to get out into the country?"
"Oh, yes!" Darwen answered. "Can you walk?"