moon lift itself up, slowly, between the waste road over the hilltop,
steadily, like a great bird. And he thought of the Bible, that the moon
should be turned to blood. And the next day he made haste to be friends
with Billy Pillins. And then the wild, intense games went on again under
the lamp-post, surrounded by so much darkness. Mrs. Morel, going into
her parlour, would hear the children singing away:
"My shoes are made of Spanish leather,
My socks are made of silk;
I wear a ring on every finger,
I wash myself in milk."
They sounded so perfectly absorbed in the game as their voices came
out of the night, that they had the feel of wild creatures singing.
It stirred the mother; and she understood when they came in at eight
o'clock, ruddy, with brilliant eyes, and quick, passionate speech.
They all loved the Scargill Street house for its openness, for the great
scallop of the world it had in view. On summer evenings the women would
stand against the field fence, gossiping, facing the west, watching the
sunsets flare quickly out, till the Derbyshire hills ridged across the
crimson far away, like the black crest of a newt.
In this summer season the pits never turned full time, particularly the
soft coal. Mrs. Dakin, who lived next door to Mrs. Morel, going to the
field fence to shake her hearthrug, would spy men coming slowly up the
hill. She saw at once they were colliers. Then she waited, a tall, thin,
shrew-faced woman, standing on the hill brow, almost like a menace to
the poor colliers who were toiling up. It was only eleven o'clock. From
the far-off wooded hills the haze that hangs like fine black crape at
the back of a summer morning had not yet dissipated. The first man came
to the stile. "Chock-chock!" went the gate under his thrust.
"What, han' yer knocked off?" cried Mrs. Dakin.
"We han, missis."
"It's a pity as they letn yer goo," she said sarcastically.
"It is that," replied the man.
"Nay, you know you're flig to come up again," she said.
And the man went on. Mrs. Dakin, going up her yard, spied Mrs. Morel
taking the ashes to the ash-pit.
"I reckon Minton's knocked off, missis," she cried.
"Isn't it sickenin!" exclaimed Mrs. Morel in wrath.
"Ha! But I'n just seed Jont Hutchby."
"They might as well have saved their shoe-leather," said Mrs. Morel. And
both women went indoors disgusted.
The colliers, their faces scarcely blackened, were trooping home again.
Morel hated to go back. He loved the sunny morning. But he had gone to
pit to work, and to be sent home again spoilt his temper.
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