Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer

ily "putting together the pieces," but not assuming any airs, he managed his public-house well, and with especial attention to the comfort of his older neighbours.

, more than once-perhaps n

rom a good well-a precious thing in this village. These cottages had lately been overhauled and enlarged-Bettesworth detailed to me all the improvements, praising the new sculleries and sheds that had been added-and then the tenants, as if stricken with madness, found fault with the water-supply, and lodged a complaint with the sanitar

building land for sale in the vicinity, estimated their acreage, and related the offers which had been already made for them. From that, working all the while, Bettesworth would wander off to the drought, and I would hear how long this or that neighbour had been without water; how a third (whose new horse, by the way, "was turnin' out well-but there, so do all they that comes from" a certain source, wh

to him; at will he could summon any one of them into his consciousness. A modern man would have had to stop and sift and compare them, and build theories and systems out of all that wealth of material. Not being modern

few points, and do not tell how any of them were suggested. The talk was at one time of Basingstoke Fair, "where they goes to hire theirselves for the year." Of "shepherds with a bit o' wool in their hats, carters with a bit o' whipcord, and servant gals," and so on. "I went once," said Bettesworth, "when I was a nipper-went away from Penstead; but I n

e concertina like him. He's the on'y one 's ever I heared play the church bells-chimes, an' fire 'em, and all-wonderful! Blue Bells of Scotland, too-to hear him play that, an' the chimes, jest exact! No trouble to make out what 'tis. Oh, he's a reg'lar musician! He've trained all his sons to same thing. One of 'em plays the fiddle; another of 'em got a thing what he scratches along wi' wires, sounds purty near like a fiddle.... 'Ten't no good for 'n in a town, 'less 'tis a fair or summat o' that; but in any out-o'-the-way place. 'Relse, if he gets to a fair, there'll be three or four landlords about tryin' to get hold of 'n; and they'

understand. And I have quite forgotten how Bettesworth spoke of the man's brother, a

t a difficult place in the gravel-pit the father reached out and struck his son's horse. The "dummy" springs on him, throws hi

o! Purty near as fast as you can talk. And all the time his eye 'd be on ye, watchin' ye. But to see him write on his slate-wonderful fast! and then" (here Bettesworth breaks into dramatic action, licking his hand and smu

hat the man had become "a wonderful good shoemaker, but didn't sim t

In the doorway of the little tool-shed I stood listening-listening to the gentle murmur on the roof, on the long fresh grass of a sma

cottage roof against the newly dug garden-ground of the steep hillside. Above the half-diaphanous green tracery of the trees, cool delicious cloud, "dropping f

f a newly-born goat; while in the orchard just before me Bettesworth stooped over a zinc pail, which, as he scrubbed it, gave out a low metallic note. Then there were three undertones or backgrounds of sound, that of the soft-falling rain being one of them. Another, which diapered the rain-noise just as the young leaves showed their diaper-work again

nook of orchard where he was working; so, too, did his occasional quiet chatter harmonize well with the pattering of the warm rain. And for a

ly he raise

y took 'n off to the asylum at Brookwood this mornin'. Got this 'ere religion.

religious mania w

hat it wants. If they can get 'em where they can dummer somethin' else into 'em, then they be al

or shelter from a temporary thickening of

to do nothing. 'Relse, when she was there afore, they told my sister she'd work as well as e'er a woman in the place. She see several there what she knowed. Fred Baker's wife, what used to be signalman, for one. But what most amused her was a old woman, when they was goin' out two by two for their walk in the grou

the man Crosby was said to have got "religi

n, from whose crop seventy-two peas were taken, "Bother he's picture!" said the Baptist. Another imprecation of this man's was, "Drabbit it!" at which, however, Bettesworth used to e

h thought fit to tell me that he was no better. A neighbour had cycled to Brookwood on Sunday to see him

we. Nobody don't know nothin' about it. 'Ten't as if they come back to tell ye. There's my father, what bin dead this forty year. What a crool man he must be not to 've come back in all that time, if he was

ple had any. The fame of these peas had got abroad in the parish; it had reached a youth-a new curate fresh from a theological college-a

o' peas! I never heared talk o' such a thing! I told the gal t

changed his policy. On June 13 once more he had peas to boast o

and there," she would say,

answer, "Yes, they be;

to me, "I en't a-goin' to have that haulm spo

e was right. It was all reported

'You better get along without that shilli

picked a few peas very early, and ruined his crop; for in the hot we

us just then, yet ill

e! I was up in my garden when Mrs. Skinner come up lookin' at my peas. She reg'lar laughed at me. 'Well, Fred, you be a purty picture!' There was the sweat all trinklin' down my arms, an' the