ook at the difference it
makes to the pleasures o' life. What has a man got to do who ain't
learnt to be fond o' reading? Nowt but to go to t' public to spend his
evenings and drink away his earnings. So 'ee goes on, and his woife
doan't care about taking pains about a house when t' maister ain't never
at home but to his meals, and his children get to look for him coming
home drunk and smashing the things, and when he gets old he's just a
broken-down drunkard, wi'out a penny saved, and nowt but the poorhouse
before him. Now, that's the sort o' life o' a man who can't read, or
can't read well enough to take pleasure in it, has before him. That is
so, bean't it?"

There was a long silence; all the lads knew that the picture was a true
one.

"Now look at t'other side," Jack went on; "look at Merton. He didn't get
moore pay a week than a pitman does; look how he lived, how comfortable
everything was! What a home that ud be for a man to go back to after his
work was done! Noice furniture, a wife looking forward neat and tidy to
your coming hoam for the evening. Your food all comfortable, the kids
clean and neat, and delighted to see feyther home."

There was again a long silence.

"Where be the girls to make the tidy wife a' cooming from, I wonder?"
John Jordan said; "not in Stokebridge, I reckon!"

"The lasses take mostly after the lads," Jack said. "If we became better
they'd be ashamed to lag behind. Mrs. Dodgson, the new schoolmaister's
wife, told me t'other day she thought o' opening a sort o' night class
for big girls, to teach 'em sewing, and making their own clothes, and
summat about cooking, and such like."

"That would be summat like," said Harry Shepherd, who saw that his
opportunity had come. "I wonder whether t' maister would open a
night-school for us; I'd go for one, quick enough. I doan't know as I've
rightly thought it over before, but now ye puts it in that way, Jack,
there be no doubt i' my moind that I should; it would be a heap better
to get some larning, and to live like a decent kind o' chap."

"I doan't know," John Jordan said; "it moight be better, but look what a
lot o' work one ud have to do."

"Well, John, I always finds plenty o' time for play," Jack said. "You
could give an hour a day to it, and now the winter's coming on you'd be
main glad sometimes as you'd got summat to do. I should ha' to talk to
the schoolmaister a bit. I doan't know as he'd be willing to give up his
time of an ev