Page 69 (1/2)

"I'ton uncomfortably

"What was I a-sayin'? You

a man, can have no idea of the life us poor wos runnin', and then no thanks fer it

a'ter all I'd just like t' see Bill Lawton try it fer jest one week

He'd be a ravin' lunatic, an' thet I tell him often This country's

jest awful, too I tell hiet out sometimes, and I 'spect he

will, when he's made his pile, poor man, an' then we'll have a chanst

to go back East again When we lived East, Mr de Laney, we had a

house--not like this little shack; a good house with nigh on to a dozen

roos once in

a while, but now that Bill Lawton's oin' to becoh wore out with it all"

"Then you lived East once?" asked Bennington

"Law, yes! We lived in Illinoy once, and th' Lord only knoisht we

lived there yet, though the farht of work and no pay

sometimes" The inner doubts as to the biscuits proved too it oin' to git anythin' a tall if I don't run right

off and tend to theton had time then to notice the decorations of

the "parlour" They offered to the eye a strange mixture of the East