“You were not the gardener here,” I said. “I saw him; his name is Craggs, and he still lives in the hollow.”
“Oh ay, Jonas Craggs—young Joe, we called him; I knew his father,” replied my visitor. “He was only here a matter of six-and-thirty years. I was superann'ated to make way for him. Young-Joe, we called him, and I was curious to see how things had come on in the garden of late.”
“You were superannuated thirty-six years ago,” said I. “What age are you now?”
“I'm ninety-eight, sir,” he replied with a smirk.
I showed him round the garden. He said he could see that the things he had planted had grown summut; and I walked through the churchyard the next Sunday with the greatest complacency.
When I told the Rector that my experience of this grand old gardener tended to make me take the side of Thurswell and the neighbourhood against scientific investigation in regard to longevity, he assured me that if I paid a visit to a certain elderly lady who lived with a middle-aged granddaughter in a cottage on the road to Cransdown I should find ample confirmation of the faith for which I had a leaning. The lady's name was, he said, Martha Trendall, and she really was, he thought, a genuine centenarian, for she had a vivid recollection of events which had happened quite ninety years ago; and, unlike most reputed centenarians, she remembered many details of the historical incidents that had taken place in her young days; she was a most intelligent person altogether, and had evidently been at one time a great reader, though latterly her eyesight had shown signs of failing.
I made up my mind to pay a visit to this Mrs. Trendall, and thought that perhaps I might get material for a letter to the Times that should not leave the scientific investigator a leg to stand on. A month, however, elapsed before I carried out my intention, though the Rector thought this was not a case for procrastination: when a lady is anything over a hundred her hold upon life shows a tendency to relax, he said, for even the most notorious centenarians cannot be expected to live for ever. But when I managed to make my call I must confess that I was amply repaid for the time I spent in the company of Mrs. Trendall.
I found her sitting in her chair in what is called the chimney corner when it exists in its original condition in a cottage, but is termed the “ingle nook” in those red brick imitation cottages which are being flung about the country by those architects who concern themselves in the development of estates. I saw at once that such a figure would be out of place anywhere except in the chimney corner of a cottage kitchen, with immovable windows, but a “practicable” iron crane for the swinging of pots over the hearth fire. The atmosphere—thanks to the immobile casements—was also all that it should be: it was congenially centenarian, I perceived in a moment. It had a pleasant pungency of old bacon, but though I looked about for a genuine flitch maturing in the smoke, I failed to see one—still, the nail on which it should be hanging was there all right.