Then comes a crowd of burly navvies with pickaxes and barrows, and while hardly a wrinkle is made in the fading mother's face or a new curve of health in the blooming girl's, the hills are cut through or the breaches between them spanned, we choose our level and the white steam-pennon flies along it.

Bensington worked like a conscientious navvy.

When I unbolted the parlor door and found a somnolent navvy waiting to be shaved, I realized with astonishment how brief the interlude had been.