Nature delights in thus adding toil to toil and trouble to
trouble. It is only in the matter of adding pleasure to pleasure that
she is niggardly.
Brightly was coming up the moor towards St. Mary Tavy. His face looked
smaller and his hands bigger. There was another change, a far more
striking one; he was actually well dressed; there was nothing, of
course, in the shape of useless accessories, such as shirt or underwear,
but the black seal-like raiment had been discarded and a suit of brown
cloth had taken its place. He had picked up those clothes while
burrowing in a wheal to find shelter from a pitiless downpour. It had
been a great find which had rejoiced his heart, for although he was
accustomed to make a living by picking up things which other people
threw away, he had never before discovered anything half as priceless as
a suit of stout garments. It had never occurred to him that they might
not have been thrown away, but merely hidden in the wheal, or that he
had no right to them, or that it could be dangerous for him to be seen
about in them.
"Us will pitch here," said Brightly, stopping near the moor gate, and
lowering his basket carefully. "It be dinner time, Ju."
The little dog wagged at the prospect. Dinner time occurred frequently,
but generally without the dinner. She sniffed ravenously at the
handkerchief in the corner of the basket, and decided that the menu of
the day was cheese, largely rind, but still cheese, a slab of bread, and
two onions. It was one of the feast-days. They reposed upon heather, and
Brightly made a division of the food, reserving the onions for himself,
but allotting Ju a bigger piece of rind as compensation. "You'm a lot
littler than I," he explained. "Your belly be filled quicker. It be no
good giving yew an onion, 'cause yew wun't yet 'en. Tak' your
cheese--don't swallow like that, ye little stoopid! Yew don't get the
taste of 'en at all. Yet 'en slow, and tak' a bit o' bread wi' 'en same
as I du. Us wun't get no more to-day like enough."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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