Then the post-boy going before and the young gentleman following, they proceeded very gently to carry the motionless form in the direction of West Wyke.
Joyce remained with the young lady; she studied her with great attention from head to foot. The sky was clear, and there was still much light entangled in the upper atmosphere. The whole of the north was full of silvery twilight.
'I niver seed a born leddy afore so close,' said Joyce.
'I am a born lady,' replied the other, haughtily.
'Did I say you wasn't? Have you any other rags on but what I sees?'
'Rags!' indignantly. 'What do you mean, girl?'
'Look here,' said Joyce, 'I hasn't. Fust comes the gown, and then comes I. Down in the good land to Zeal and Tawton, where the lanes be cut deep, I seed there be nethermost hard rock, then over that comes shellat, then a sort of gravelly trade (stuff), then a top o' that meat airth; and over all, like the gown, the waving green grass. Up here on the moor t'ain't so. There's the granite and then the moss, and if you scrats through the moss you comes right on and on to the stone. That be like us as lives up here, vaither and I, but wi' the quality it be different, as lives in lew (sheltered) places; they has more coverings nor us, night and day, I reckon.'
'You have no more clothes on you than that thin gown?'
'No, us be like moor rock, fust the moss, then the stone.'
'I never axes for naught; what I wants I takes.'
The lady shivered and drew back on her seat. She was disgusted with the appearance, and offended at the rudeness of the girl.
'Why don't clothes grow on our backs, thick and warm as the wool on sheep, the fur on rabbits, and the moss on moorstones?'Twould come handier,' observed Joyce Cobbledick.
'Wot's that man, that young man as spoke to you and I?' asked Joyce.
'Most certainly not,' with a contemptuous shrug.
'He is travelling with us--that is all. He joined my father in taking a chaise from Launceston.'
'Why didn't y' travel by the mail-coach? Her goes by ivery day.'
'The coach had left Launceston when we arrived there from Falmouth, so we engaged a chaise. My father was in haste to reach Exeter, and that person joined us. I do not know his name, neither do I care. My father satisfied himself, I presume, of his respectability. That is all.'