I put that
enlightened object before him, and now he can turn his honest
halfpenny by the three penn'orth a week.'
'I wonder he has no competitors.'
'He has plenty, Mr. Jasper, but he stones 'em all away. Now, I
don't know what this scheme of mine comes to,' pursues Durdles,
considering about it with the same sodden gravity; 'I don't know
what you may precisely call it. It ain't a sort of a--scheme of a-
-National Education?'
'I should say not,' replies Jasper.
'I should say not,' assents Durdles; 'then we won't try to give it
a name.'
'He still keeps behind us,' repeats Jasper, looking over his
shoulder; 'is he to follow us?'
'We can't help going round by the Travellers' Twopenny, if we go
the short way, which is the back way,' Durdles answers, 'and we'll
drop him there.'
So they go on; Deputy, as a rear rank one, taking open order, and
invading the silence of the hour and place by stoning every wall,
post, pillar, and other inanimate object, by the deserted way.
'Is there anything new down in the crypt, Durdles?' asks John
Jasper.
'Anything old, I think you mean,' growls Durdles. 'It ain't a spot
for novelty.'
'Any new discovery on your part, I meant.'
'There's a old 'un under the seventh pillar on the left as you go
down the broken steps of the little underground chapel as formerly
was; I make him out (so fur as I've made him out yet) to be one of
them old 'uns with a crook.
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