It might have been the body of a man of twenty-eight, except that there were, perhaps, too many blue scars, like tattoo-marks, where the coal-dust remained under the skin, and that his chest was too hairy.

But he put his hand on his side ruefully.

It was his fixed belief that, because he did not get fat, he was as thin as a starved rat.

Paul looked at his father's thick, brownish hands all scarred, with broken nails, rubbing the fine smoothness of his sides, and the incongruity struck him.

It seemed strange they were the same flesh.
"I suppose," he said to his father, "you had a good figure once." "Eh!" exclaimed the miner, glancing round, startled and timid, like a child.
"He had," exclaimed Mrs.Morel, "if he didn't hurtle himself up as if he was trying to get in the smallest space he could." "Me!" exclaimed Morel--"me a good figure! I wor niver much more n'r a skeleton." "Man!" cried his wife, "don't be such a pulamiter!" "'Strewth!" he said.