Slipping cannily
on to his hands and knees, he crawled out under the tail-board,
dragging his "moles" after him, and stood outside in the moonlight
shaking himself into his trousers.
Jimmy was a little man who always wore a large size in moleskins--for
some reason best known to himself--or more probably for no reason at
all; or because of a habit he'd got into accidentally years ago--or
because of the motherly trousers his mother used to build for him when
he was a boy. And he always shook himself into his pants after the
manner of a woman shaking a pillow into a clean slip; his chin down on
his chest and his jaw dropped, as if he'd take himself in his teeth,
after the manner of the woman with a pillow, were he not prevented by
sound anatomical reasons.
"You look reg'lerly tuckered out, Ben," he said, "an' yer horse
could do with a spell too. Git down, man, and have a pint er tea and
a bite."
Ben got down wearily and knew at once how knocked up he was. He sat
right down on the hard ground, embracing and drawing up his knees, and
felt as if he'd like never to get up again: while Jimmy shook some
chaff and corn that he carried for his riding hack into a box for the
horse, and his travelling mate, Billy Grimshaw, lifted his big
namesake half full of cold tea, on to the glowing coals by the burning
log--looking just like an orang-outang in a Crimean shirt.
Ben got a fresh horse at Alfred Gentle's farm under the shadow of
Granite Ridge, and then on to Canadian (th' Canadian Lead of the
roaring days), which had been saved from the usual fate by becoming a
farming township.
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