‘Plucky lot of fightin’ good fights of whatsername they’d do if we didn’t see they had a quiet place to fight in.  And such fightin’ as theirs is!  Cats on the tiles.  T’other callin’ to which to come on.  I’d give a month’s pay to get some o’ them broad-backed beggars in London sweatin’ through a day’s road-makin’ an’ a night’s rain.  They’d carry on a deal afterwards—­same as we’re supposed to carry on.  I’ve bin turned out of a measly arf-license pub down Lambeth way, full o’ greasy kebmen, ‘fore now,’ said Ortheris with an oath.

‘Maybe you were dhrunk,’ said Mulvaney soothingly.

‘Worse nor that.  The Forders were drunk. I was wearin’ the Queen’s uniform.’

‘I’d no particular thought to be a soldier i’ them days,’ said Learoyd, still keeping his eye on the bare hill opposite, ‘but this sort o’ talk put it i’ my head.  They was so good, th’ chapel folk, that they tumbled ower t’other side.  But I stuck to it for ’Liza’s sake, specially as she was learning me to sing the bass part in a horotorio as Jesse were gettin’ up.  She sung like a throstle hersen, and we had practisin’s night after night for a matter of three months.’

‘I know what a horotorio is,’ said Ortheris pertly.  ’It’s a sort of chaplain’s sing-song—­words all out of the Bible, and hullabaloojah choruses.’

‘Most Greenhow Hill folks played some instrument or t’other, an’ they all sung so you might have heard them miles away, and they were so pleased wi’ the noise they made they didn’t fair to want anybody to listen.  The preacher sung high seconds when he wasn’t playin’ the flute, an’ they set me, as hadn’t got far with big fiddle, again Willie Satterthwaite, to jog his elbow when he had to get a’ gate playin’.  Old Jesse was happy if ever a man was, for he were th’ conductor an’ th’ first fiddle an’ th’ leadin’ singer, beatin’ time wi’ his fiddle-stick, till at times he’d rap with it on the table, and cry out, “Now, you mun all stop; it’s my turn.”  And he’d face round to his front, fair sweating wi’ pride, to sing th’ tenor solos.  But he were grandest i’ th’ choruses, waggin’ his head, flinging his arms round like a windmill, and singin’ hisself black in the face.  A rare singer were Jesse.

‘Yo’ see, I was not o’ much account wi’ ’em all exceptin’ to ’Liza Roantree, and I had a deal o’ time settin’ quiet at meetings and horotorio practises to hearken their talk, and if it were strange to me at beginnin’, it got stranger still at after, when I was shut on it, and could study what it meaned.

‘Just after th’ horotorios come off, ’Liza, as had allus been weakly like, was took very bad.  I walked Dr. Warbottom’s horse up and down a deal of times while he were inside, where they wouldn’t let me go, though I fair ached to see her.