sionally somebody came out of this
way and went into the field down the path. In a dozen yards the night
had swallowed them. The children played on.

They were brought exceedingly close together owing to their isolation.
If a quarrel took place, the whole play was spoilt. Arthur was very
touchy, and Billy Pillins--really Philips--was worse. Then Paul had to
side with Arthur, and on Paul's side went Alice, while Billy Pillins
always had Emmie Limb and Eddie Dakin to back him up. Then the six would
fight, hate with a fury of hatred, and flee home in terror. Paul never
forgot, after one of these fierce internecine fights, seeing a big red
moon lift itself up, slowly, between the waste road over the hilltop,
steadily, like a great bird. And he thought of the Bible, that the moon
should be turned to blood. And the next day he made haste to be friends
with Billy Pillins. And then the wild, intense games went on again under
the lamp-post, surrounded by so much darkness. Mrs. Morel, going into
her parlour, would hear the children singing away:

"My shoes are made of Spanish leather,
My socks are made of silk;
I wear a ring on every finger,
I wash myself in milk."

They sounded so perfectly absorbed in the game as their voices came
out of the night, that they had the feel of wild creatures singing.
It stirred the mother; and she understood when they came in at eight
o'clock, ruddy, with brilliant eyes, and quick, passionate speech.

They all loved the Scargill Street house for its openness, for the great
scallop of the world it had in view. On summer evenings the women would
stand against the field fence, gossiping, facing the west, watching the
sunsets flare quickly out, till the Derbyshire hills ridged across the
crimson far away, like the black crest of a newt.

In this summer season the pits never turned full time, particularly the
soft coal. Mrs. Dakin, who lived next door to Mrs. Morel, going to the
field fence to shake her hearthrug, would spy men coming slowly up the
hill. She saw at once they were colliers. Then she waited, a tall, thin,
shrew-faced woman, standing on the hill brow, almost like a menace to
the poor colliers who were toiling up. It was only eleven o'clock. From
the far-off wooded hills the haze that hangs like fine black crape at
the back of a summer morning had not yet dissipated. The first man came
to the stile. "Chock-chock!" went the gate under his thrust.

"What, han' yer