The Boy in the Garden

I always felt as if I should like to punch that boy's head, and then
directly after I used to feel as if I shouldn't care to touch him,
because he looked so dirty and ragged.

It was not dirty dirt, if you know what I mean by that, but dirt that he
gathered up in his work--bits of hay and straw, and dust off a shed
floor; mud over his boots and on his toes, for you could see that the
big boots he wore seemed to be like a kind of coarse rough shell with a
great open mouth in front, and his toes used to seem as if they lived in
there as hermit-crabs do in whelk shells. They used to play about in
there and waggle this side and that side when he was standing still
looking at you; and I used to think that some day they would come a
little way out and wait for prey like the different molluscs I had read
about in my books.

But you should have seen his hands! I've seen them so coated with dirt
that it hung on them in knobs, and at such times he used to hold them up
to me with the thumbs and fingers spread out wide, and then down he
would go again and continue his work, which, when he was in this state,
would be pulling up the weeds from among the onions in the long beds.