"No, I haven't.

Somehow a lad doesn't care for riding a donkey when he gets as old as I am." He walked away, feeling stiff, chilly, and uncomfortable from the effects of his previous night's work, while his eyes smarted and ached.
"I'll go over and see how old Tom's getting on," he said as he looked across the cheerless fen in the direction of Grimsey, where a faint line of smoke rose up toward the sky.

"Wonder who did it!" _Plash_! _plash_! _plash_! _plash_! He turned sharply, to see, about a hundred yards away, the figure of gaunt, grim-looking Dave standing up in his punt, and poling himself along by the dry rustling reeds, a grey-drab looking object in a grey-drab landscape.
Then, like a flash, came to the lad's memory the engagement made to go liggering that day, and he wondered why it was that he did not feel more eager to have a day's fishing for the pike.
_Pee-wit_! _pee-wit_! came from off the water in a low plaintive whistle, which Dick answered, and in a minute or two the decoy-man poled his boat ashore, smiling in his tight, dry way.
"Now, then, young mester," he said, "I've got a straange nice lot o' bait and plenty o' hooks and band, and it's about as good a day for fishing as yow could have.

Wheer's young Tom o' Grimsey ?" "At home, of course!" said Dick in a snappish way, which he wondered at himself.
"At home, o' course ?" said Dave quietly as he stood up in the boat resting upon the pole.

"Why, he were to be here, ready." "How could he be ready after last night ?" said Dick sharply.
Dave took off his fox-skin cap after letting his pole fall into the hollow of his arm, and scratched his head before uttering a low cachinnatory laugh that was not pleasant to the ear.
"Yow seem straange and popped [put out of temper] this morning, young mester.