Even at these close quarters, where Abner felt the pressure of his father’s protecting legs and heard him spitting into the net over his head, there was no conversation between them. John Fellows kept his speech for his mates, for George Harper, or, on occasion, for the referee; but at half-time, when most of the players ran in to the pavilion and the ball was free, he would give Abner a poke in the back and his neighbours a wink, and the lad would slip under the wire roping and plunge into the _mêlée_ of boys who were scrambling for its possession. Once Abner had dribbled the ball away from the others and sent a shot at the goal which George Harper, who had stayed behind talking, moved mechanically to stop, and missed; a ripple of laughter had spread round the field, and when Abner ran back under the ropes with his face flaming, his father pulled him in by the ear and said with his clay pipe between his teeth: ‘Damn’ little blood-worm yo’ are! Bain’t he, George?’ And George Harper, staring down at him with his big, melancholy eyes, said, ‘Ah . . .’ Next day, as a reward for his prowess, John Fellows took Abner with him on his afternoon walk, past the cherry orchard, past the stationary cages at the pithead and the silent engine-house of the Great Mawne Colliery, down between the smoking spoil-banks to the bridge over the Stour which separates the two counties of Worcester and Stafford, in either of which the police of the other are providentially powerless. Here, on a cinder pathway shaded by the sooty chestnuts of Mawne Hall, there was racing between the limber fawn-skinned whippets that the miners fancy: timid, quivering creatures, with their slim waists bound in flannel jackets like frail women in their stays. It was thrilling to watch them slip from the leash, race with their pointed heads converging, and roll over at the finish in a cloud of cinder-dust. On that Sunday the police of Staffordshire were quiescent. George Harper was there, his massive thighs bulging striped cashmere trousers. There was joking between George and Abner’s father about the goal that the boy had kicked. John Fellows won five shillings on a dog called Daisy, and Abner trailed home behind him at six o’clock, when the steam in the engine-house was beginning to hiss from its exhaust in preparation for Monday’s work. John Fellows retired to the Lyttleton Arms with his five shillings and spent a dozen more, while Abner went home, too tired to play and clammed for his tea. It surprised him to find number eleven locked up, though he ought to have remembered that before they went out dog-racing his father had left the key with Mrs Moseley, who did the housework, and cooked their dinner; but when he walked round to Mrs Moseley’s he found that she had gone to church and forgotten to take the key out of her pocket. He tramped back home again and fell asleep on the doorstep.