Fearless, black-bearded strong man that he is, though very quiet, even silky and soft in his ordinary demeanour, it was laughable to think of Kid Norris as a "darling." Along with Alf he was at work all through the summer on the new railway near Bordon Camp, they two being experts and earning a halfpenny an hour more than the common navvy. Their way was to leave home at four in the morning and walk the eight miles to their work. In the evening the 7 p.m. up-train brought them within a mile and a half of this village. Once or twice they overtook me, making their way homewards, long-striding; and sometimes they would work an hour or two after that in their gardens, in the summer twilight. When the weather worsened and the days shortened, Kid threw up his railway-work, and took a job at digging sea-kale for a large grower. The fields were scattered about the district; some of them within two miles, and the remotest not more than three, from his home. He was the leading man of a gang of labourers; and at my paltry turf-laying I heard of his work, which, it appears, was new to him. "They had to save," he said (and the fact was interesting to old Bettesworth), "jest the parts he should ha' throwed away.... It did take some heavin': they stamms was gone down like tree-roots," especially down there in such-and-such a field. "Up here above Barlow's Mill 'twan't half the trouble." The master said to Kid, "You no call to slack. I got plenty o' trenchin' you can go on at, when the kale's up." Then said Kid to his gang, "Some o' you chaps 'll have to move about a bit quicker, if you're goin' trenchin' 'long o' me." He sent one of them packing--a neighbour from this village, too. "Not a bad chap to work, so far as that goes, but too stiff, somehow," Bettesworth said, evidently knowing the man's style. Towards the end of one afternoon, "It looks comin' up rainy," Bettesworth observed, "but old Kid wants it frosty. Where he is now--trenchin' up there at Waterman's--he says this rain makes it so heavy; it comes up on they spuds jest as much as ever a man can lift." "And that's not a little," said I; "Kid's a strong man." "Well--he's jest the age; jest on forty. I says to 'n, 'Some of 'em 'd go for you, if they knowed you was wantin' frost.' He laughed. 'We all speaks for ourselves, don't we?' he says." Then Bettesworth added, "There, I never could have a better neighbour 'n he is. Always jest the same. He looks out for me, too."