Let us hear if he didn't, Sophia." After a while Joe stopped, for he had run himself very near short of wind; and he began rather to think shame of shouting and bellering so at an old man, and him as whisht as a trout through it all.

And when Joe pulled in, he only said, as quietly as ever was, that Joe was a "natural curiosity." Joe didn't know very well what this meant; but he thought it was sauce, and it had like to have set him off again; but he beat himself down as well as he could, and he said, "Have you any thing against me?
If you have, speak it out like a man; and don't sit there twiddling your thumbs, and calling folks out of their names in this road." Then it came out plain enough.

All this ill-nature, Miss Sandal, was just because poor Joe hadn't brought him the same stones as he had gathered on the fells; and he said that changing them was either a very dirty trick, or a very clumsy joke.
"Trick," said Joe.

"_Joke_, did you say?
It was ratherly past a joke to expect me to carry a load of broken stones all the way here, when there was plenty on the spot.

I'm not such a fool as you've taken me for," said Joe.