If you'll do it at bob a yard you can get gain' on the other end iv th' 'eap." The price was far below current rates for cutting metal, but Nickie was not penurious and grasping.

He threw off his tattered coat, and, draped in fragments of a shirt, in a pair of trousers, half of which fluttered in the breeze, and boots that looked like a collection of fragments, he set to work.
Certainly Nicholas Crips did not show any disposition to work himself to death.

After an hour his employer told him he wasn't likely to earn enough to keep a rag-gatherer in toilet soap, but Nickie explained again that he was merely exercising his liver, and had no intention of making an independence as a breaker of road metal.
Nickie's heap was right opposite the great, fanciful iron gates of the cemented residence.

He could see the well-kept garden and the showy house from where he worked, and he frequently ceased his half hearted rapping at the tough stone to watch children playing on the lawn.

He was particularly interested in a tall, `severe-looking, fair-haired woman, who appeared on the balcony for a moment.
Mr.Crips had been at work for about three hours, during which time he had perspired a good deal and gathered much dust, for Nickie was habitually easy going, and his task, although pursued with no diligence, had "taken it out of him" to some extent.