“Well, yes, there's been plenty going on, plenty,” Tembarom admitted.
“I've been lying here for ten year',” said Tummas, savagely. “An' I've had nowt i' th' world to do an' nowt to think on but what I could mak' foak tell me about th' village. But nowt happens but this chap gettin' drunk an' that chap deein' or losin' his place, or wenches gettin' married or havin' childer. I know everything that happens, but it's nowt but a lot o' women clackin'. If I'd not been a cripple, I'd ha' been at work for mony a year by now, 'arnin' money to save by an' go to 'Meriker.”
“You seem to be sort of stuck on America. How's that?”
“I dunnot loike it nor yet not loike it, but I've heard a bit more about it than I have about th' other places on th' map. Foak goes there to seek their fortune, an' it seems loike there's a good bit doin'.”
“Do you like to read newspapers?” said Tembarom, inspired to his query by a recollection of the vision of things “doin'” in the Sunday Earth.
“Wheer'd I get papers from?” the boy asked testily. “Foak like us hasn't got th' brass for 'em.”
“I'll bring you some New York papers,” promised Tembarom, grinning a little in anticipation. “And we'll talk about the news that's in them. The Sunday Earth is full of pictures. I used to work on that paper myself.”
“Tha did?” Tummas cried excitedly. “Did tha help to print it, or was it th' one tha sold i' th' streets?”
“Wrote some of th' stuff in it? Wrote it thaself? How could tha, a common chap like thee?” he asked, more excited still, his ferret eyes snapping.
“I don't know how I did it,” Tembarom answered, with increased cheer and interest in the situation. “It wasn't high-brow sort of work.”
Tummas leaned forward in his incredulous eagerness.
“Does tha mean that they paid thee for writin' it--paid thee?”
“I guess they wouldn't have done it if they'd been Lancashire,” Tembarom answered. “But they hadn't much more sense than I had. They paid me twenty-five dollars a week--that's five pounds.”
“I dunnot believe thee,” said Tummas, and leaned back on his pillow short of breath.
“I didn't believe it myself till I'd paid my board two weeks and bought a suit of clothes with it,” was Tembarom's answer, and he chuckled as he made it.