While the rest of the party were mopping brows and draining ale-pots in the farmers' public, he was employing himself in aimlessly kicking a stone about one of the streets, when he was accosted by a woman of the shopkeeping class, a decent elderly woman, who had come out for a mouthful of air, with a child dragging after her.
'Yoong mester, yo've coom fro a distance, hannot yo ?' The woman's tone struck the boy pleasantly as though it had been a phrase of cheerful music.

There was a motherliness in it--a something, for which, perhaps all unknown to himself, his secret heart was thirsting.
'Fro Masholme,' he said, looking at her full, so that she could see all the dark, richly coloured face she had had a curiosity to see; then he added abruptly, 'We're bound Kinder way wi t' sheep--reet t'other side o' t' Scout.' The woman nodded.

'Aye, I know a good mony o' your Kinder foak.
They've coom by here a mony year passt.

But I doan't know as I've seen yo afoor.

Yo're nobbut a yoong 'un.