I can't do it, sir.'
'Well, wilful will have his way,' said Mr. Thomas, nodding at the master;
and as neither of them addressed Stephen again, he left the office,
amazed to find that he was not forbidden to return to work on the
following Monday.
The Red Gravel Pit, where Miss Anne had promised to meet her scholars on
Sunday morning, was a quarry cut out of the side of one of the hills,
from which the stones were taken for making and mending the roads in the
neighbourhood. The quarry had been hollowed out into a kind of enclosed
circle, only entered by the road through which the waggons passed. All
along the edge of the red rocks high overhead there was a coppice of
green hazel-bushes and young oaks, where the boys had spent many a Sunday
searching for wild nuts, and hunting the squirrels from tree to tree.
Stephen and Tim met half an hour earlier than the time appointed by Miss
Anne, and by dint of great perseverance and strength rolled together five
large stones, under the shadow of an oak tree; and placed four of them in
a row before the largest one, as Tim had once seen the children sitting
in the village school at Longville, when he had taken a donkey-load of
coals for the schoolmaster.
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