| 215 | 216 | 217 | 218 | 219 |
| 1 | 90 | 179 | 269 | 358 |
|
siding, and hauling the empty ones up by the wire of a great
windlass--working the entire quarry at last single-handed.
I am told that Kinkle made a very good thing indeed out of him for Lady
Wondershoot, consuming as he did scarcely anything but his food, though
that never restrained her denunciation of "the Creature" as a gigantic
parasite upon her charity....
At that time he used to wear a sort of smock of sacking, trousers of
patched leather, and iron-shod sabots. Over his head was sometimes a
queer thing--a worn-out beehive straw chair it was, but usually he went
bareheaded. He would be moving about the pit with a powerful
deliberation, and the Vicar on his constitutional round would get there
about midday to find him shamefully eating his vast need of food with
his back to all the world.
His food was brought to him every day, a mess of grain in the husk, in a
truck--a small railway truck, like one of the trucks he was perpetually
filling with chalk, and this load he used to char in an old limekiln and
then devour. Sometimes he would mix with it a bag of sugar. Sometimes he
would sit licking a lump of such salt as is given to cows, or eating a
huge lump of dates, stones and all, such as one sees in London on
barrows. For drink he walked to the rivulet beyond the burnt-out site of
the Experimental Farm at Hickleybrow and put down his face to the
stream. It was from his drinking in that way after eating that the Food
of the Gods did at last get loose, spreading first of all in huge weeds
217
Page
Quick Jump
|