So I decided to go back to the pit while I waited.

It was as easy--aye, it was easier!--to work while I waited, since wait I must.

I hauled down my old greasy working clothes, and went off to the pithead.

They were glad enough to take me on--gladder, I'm thinkin', than I was to be taken.

But it was sair hard to hear the other miners laughing at me.
"There he gaes--the stickit comic," I heard one man say, as I passed.
And another, who had never liked me, was at pains to let me hear _his_ opinion, which was that I had "had the conceit knocked oot o' me, and was glad tae tak' up the pick again." But he was wrong, If it was conceit I had felt, I was as full of it as ever--fuller, indeed.