"'All the better if you're anyways modest,' says I. 'You couldn'
find a retirededer place than this--not if you searched: an' _we_
don't mind.'

"Well, sir, the end was we stripped 'em naked as Adam, an' spread
their clothes to dry 'pon the grass. While we tended on 'em the mild
young man told us how it had happened. It seems they'd come by
excursion from Exeter. There's a blind home at Exeter, an' likewise
a cathedral choir, an' Sunday school, an' a boys' brigade, with other
sundries; an' this year the good people financin' half a dozen o'
these shows had discovered that by clubbin' two sixpences together a
shillin' could be made to go as far as eighteenpence; and how, doin'
it on the co-op, instead of an afternoon treat for each, they could
manage a two days' outin' for all--Exeter to Penzance an' the Land's
End, sleepin' one night at Penzance, an' back to Exeter at some
ungodly hour the next. It's no use your askin' me why a man
three-parts blind should want to visit the Land's End. There's an
attraction about that place, an' that's all you can say. Everybody
knows as 'tisn' worth seein', an' yet everybody wants to see it.
So why not a blind man?

"Well, this Happy Holiday Committee (as they called themselves) got
the Company to fix them up with a special excursion; an' our blind
friends--bein' sensitive, or maybe a touch above mixin' wi' the
schoolchildren an' infants--had packed themselves into this rear
compartment separate from the others. One of 'em had brought his
concertina, an' another his flute, and what with these an' other ways
of passin' the time they got along pretty comfortable till they came
to Gwinear Road: an' there for some reason they were held up an' had
to show their tickets. Anyways, the staff at Gwinear Road went along