None But the Lonely Heart [antikvár]

Chapter J Ernpst Verdun Mott thought it was dead funny, how a blanket over bent knees, T^ith the sun on it, gets like a lot of little grey, trees growing over a couple of smooth mountains, with hundreds of camp fires all along the top burning curly hairs of light. "Where the sun had took a clip of his shears along the shadows, thousands of them there little flashing white bits fell out of the dark part and rolled about in the light, just floating round, they was, turning over and oyer, regardless as a shower of millionaires. Waking up of a morning was a proper game, because nearly always it was a few minutes too soon, and it was no use of getting up for the sake of getting up, and giving yourself a dog's life for nothing. Else it was so late you had no time to catch the Workmans, so you might just as well turn over and make a morning of it, and have done with it, even if it meant a couple of minutes worrying about getting The Sack. But down there in the warm, getting The Sack never seemed to n^atter so much, and anyhow, never mind what you felt about ii;, everything all round you stayed the same. Even if the world come to an end this afternoon, them phere little white bits would still fall out of the dark parts if the sun stuck his nose in the window and started clipping along the hedge, so it was no good of worrying about nothing. But the sun never woke Him up, so it must have been old Mil Chalmers's fault again. Nobody c&uld kip down while she was scrubbing her back yard. Why she done it, wearing her poor old bones out, morning after morning, year in and oi^t, was a proper puzzler, because the railway come along the end of tTie garden and covered everything proper comic with smuts, Jim Glass's pigeons next door was no adies nor gentlemen, neither, and to cap the lot, there was the gas works just down the end of the road, and whafcome up out of that when the wind was right was a fine old prize packet, soot, steam, smoke, and stinks galore, and all of it free. So the old girl had her work cut out all right, but never mind even if it was coming down a right old soak of rain. Ma Chalmers would be there with both her buckets, one