"Violet going?"
"Nay. Ah'm holdin' no truck wi' Violet now. She's too stuck up for the likes o' me." But Fred spoke regretfully.
An hour later the waggon was jingling and rumbling through the mist. Fred, no longer over-burdened by the weight of his responsibility for the decorations, turned to Mike.
"Well, Mike, what did ye think to yon fellow on t' bridge last night?"
Mike spat carefully but emphatically over the side of the waggon.
"I thought he had just one fault."
"Eh? Ah thowt you couldn't abide him! What fault was that, then?"
"Just that he was born at all, bad cess to him! Coming down here and rantin' around as though he was a howly Father himself—telling us what we ought and ought not to do. 'Tis in the church we hear enough of being miserable sinners. I'm not wantin' any more preaching from the laity."
"Bain't you going to join t' union then?" asked Fred, deftly turning the horses round the post office corner.
"Union? Union o' fools who get all on end if a boy from the town comes to them with an old wives' tale. What do we want wi' unions at all? Will they put a head on the beer or give Foreman's missus a lighter hand with the pastry? Will they make owd Mare Becky pass the Flying Fox w'out a bit o' the stick? Will they stop mud getting through your leggings in the sheep-fold on a December morning? No, no. 'Mike, me boy,' I says to meself, 'that fellow's a fool and so are them that listens to him.'"