"You have a beautiful view here," she said. "You are fond of the
country, are you not?"
"Very," he answered.
"It is not every one," she remarked, "who is able to appreciate it,
especially when their lives have been spent as yours must have been."
He looked at her curiously. "I wonder," he said, "if you have any
idea how my life has been spent."
"You have given me," she said, "a very fair idea about some part of
it at any rate."
He drew a long breath and looked down at her.
"I have given you no idea at all," he said firmly. "I have told
you a few incidents, that is all. You have talked to me as though
I were an equal. Listen! you are probably the first lady with
whom I have ever spoken. I do not want to deceive you. I never
had a scrap of education. My father was a carpenter who drank
himself to death, and my mother was a factory girl. I was in the
workhouse when I was a boy. I have never been to school. I don't
know how to talk properly, but I should be worse even than I am, if
I had not had to mix up with a lot of men in the City who had been
properly educated. I am utterly and miserably ignorant. I've got
low tastes and lots of 'em. I was drunk a few nights ago - I've
done most of the things men who are beasts do.
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