Page:Navvies and Their Needs.djvu/11

 he held a bundle containing probably all his worldly goods, tied up in a white smock, the sleeves of which he held in his hands. As I looked at him, he sat gazing out of the window with his light blue eyes, little inclined, it seemed, to speak. When I addressed him, however, he proved ready enough to talk. After a few preliminaries, I began to ask some questions about navvies in general, their work and life. It was in reply to some question of this kind that he answered, with a touch of bitterness in his tone:—

"Outlaws, sir, that's what we are. Wanderers on the face of the earth, and outcasts from the society of all decent people."

"Well," I answered, "your occupation makes you more or less wanderers, but if you conduct yourselves decently why should decent society cast you out."

"Aye, sir, that's where it is. Why should it? But it does. Give a dog a bad name, you know, and you might as well hang him straight off. Of course, I knows well enough that some of our chaps gets a bad name for themselves, and deserves it. I doubt there's a good many blackguards among us, more's the pity, but we aint all bad, and there's some of us goes to the bad because nobody won't allow as we're fit for aught else."

"Nay, surely you make matters out to be worse than they are."

"Well, sir, I've been at this job a good bit now, and I've been up and down and all over, and I've seen a deal: and I'll just tell you how it is. Decent people, them as lives in towns and villages and has homes of their own and no occasion to tramp, they gets a notion into their heads as we belongs to a different breed from what they do. They reckon us a sort of big strong