Part 18 (2/2)
Towards the end of one afternoon, ”It looks comin' up rainy,”
Bettesworth observed, ”but old Kid wants it frosty Where he is now--trenchin' up there at Waterman's--he says this rain makes it so heavy; it comes up on they spuds jest as much as ever a man can lift”
”And that's not a little,” said I; ”Kid's a strong e; jest on forty I says to 'n, 'Soo for you, if they knowed you antin' frost' He laughed 'We all speaks for ourselves, don't we?' he says”
Then Bettesworth added, ”There, I never could have a better neighbour 'n he is Always jest the saotten the particular instance of looking out: it was a case of Kid'shim that she was short of some commodity or other--hot water, perhaps, for tea; upon which Kid said, ”Well, see there's some left for old Freddy” On another occasion, ”I had,” Bettesworth re's chiddlins,” and he owed the treat to his neighbours
”They'd killed their pig, and old Nanny brought me in a nice hot plateful I _did_ enjoy 'em: they was so soft an' nice There's nothin' I be more fond of, if I knoho cleaned 'es myself”
I could not spare ed out wearisohout it Bettesworth's conversation maintained the same homely inconspicuous character Once it was about the celery in the garden: ”'Tis the nicest celery I ever had--so crisp, an' so well-bleached I've had two sticks” (He had been told to help hiht I put some in a saucepan an' boiled it up; an' then a little pepper an' salt and a nice bit o' butter” He has no teeth now for eating it uncooked; ”or else at one time I could,” he assured ements were talked over
He ave hi froht at a time But the price was exorbitant, and Bettesworth had found a way of buying for fourpence the hundredweight cheaper And ”fo'pence--that's a lot Well, there's the price of a loaf _soon_ saved” ”And a loaf,” I put in, ”lasts you?”
”Lasts ives the crusts and odd bits to Kid for his pig One way and another I hbour, ”He don't shake off that lu ht to be, the way he eats His sister was sayin' only t'other day how everya plateful o' fat bacon as she puts before 'n”
A difficulty with a turf which was cut too thick at one cornernew boots, and already I kne he had bargained for the a pair of cork socks, besides laces and dubbin, thrown in for his rass obstinately sticking up, ”Let's see what Mr Wilby 'll do for 'n,” said Bettesworth, and he stamped his new boot down hard and the thickened sod yielded ”Do they hurt you at all?” I asked then ”No,” he said, ”not no more'n you may expect New boots always draws your feet a bit That one wrung ot home, 'fore ever I lit'n down But I be very well pleased with 'em 'Tis jest across here by the seaht I don't hold with that, for new boots Of course they en't leather; can't be for the money When you've paid for the makin' what is there left for leather, out of five-and-sixpence? No, they _can't_ be leather
”Little Tiot some new uns, with nails in 'e, with big nails, jest like his father's 'You ben't aiters too 'Now I be ready,' he says, 'if it snows or anything'”
As a rule we endured in silence the minor discomforts incidental to work like ours, in a rainter air But there were exceptions, as e agreed in hating to handle the tools with our hands so caked over with the black earth To me, indeed, the spade felt as if covered with sandpaper, so that soh of course they did but get the more thickly encrusted with soil by that device This state of our hands was the cause of another small distress: one could not touch a pocket-handkerchief And of this also we spoke, once, when I all but laughed aloud at what Bettesworth said
It began with his testily reh!” There was, indeed, and had been for a long ti drop at the end of it
My oas in like case, no pocket-handkerchief being available So I said, ”Mine would be all right in a second, if I could only get to wipe it”
Then said Bettesworth, innocently (for he had no suspicion how funny his reply was), ”Ah, but that's what you can't do, withoutdew-drops, and our hands gloved-over withwith cold, wesometimes of the weather I believe that really we liked it; for down there so close to the grass and the soil ere entering into intimacies like theirs, with the cool winter air; but our enjoyment was subconscious, whereas consciously we criticized and were not too well pleased After one interval of gruestion, ”We must be thankful it isn't so cold as yesterday” Bettesworth, however, was not to be so easily appeased, but replied, ”We don't feel it down here, where 'tis so sheltered, but depend upon it, 'tis purty cold down the road, when you gets into the wind I et on up there?' I says” (_Up there_ is on the ridge of the hill, where Steve works in a garden) ””Tis purty peaky up there,' he says
I'll lay it is, too I shouldn't think there's anybody got a much colder job than he have 'Pend upon it, he _do_ feel it”
”I was afraid on Sunday ere in for more snow”
”Ah, so was I I found my old hard broom Stacked in he was, behind a lot o' peasticks an' clutter I'dDave” (his nephew's son) ”coarden for me He'd pulled up the peasticks an' put 'em in the old shed--well, I'd told 'n to And I _fancied_ that's where the brooot 'n out and took 'n indoors with the shovel, in case any snow _should_ coe Bryant, up at Powell's Handy little chap, he is”
In this way, so long as the turf-laying lasted, Bettesworth's talk went drivelling on Was he really getting dull? I had begun by fancying so; and yet as I listened to him, perhapsrather new to me--a quality in the oldthan I had previously known--began to make its subtle appeal Half unawares it caarden mould, and the smell of the earth, and the silent saturation of the cold air You could hardly call it thought--the quality in this siht either; but they were alive for all that; and of such a nature was the life in Bettesworth's brain, in its simple touch upon the circumstances of his existence
The fretful echoes men call opinions did not sound in it; clamour of the daily press did not disturb its quiet; it was no bubble puffed out by learning, nor indeed had it any of the gracefulness which soenuine and strong ele those days wasvery real, as if the true sound of the life of the village, had at last reached ht be trivial, yet the talk was not ignoble The rippling co in perpetual ebb and flow a people, lead them perhaps no farther; and yet, should they not be said? Could they be dispensed with? Are they not an integral part of life? Let ment:
”After that rain yesterday, old Kid says, up in that clay at Waterround you can't see whether 'tis a spud or a board And it's enough to break your shoulders all to pieces He _was_ tired last night, he says”
Well--to me the observation justifies itself, and I like it for its own sake It touched me with an elusive vitality of its own, for which after our turf-laying I began generally to listen in Bettesworth's talk, and which nowadays I hear in that of his neighbours, as when old Nanny Norris ossip