In truth, it should have been taken up the previous day, as I ventured to suggest. Then Bettesworth, contemptuously,
"He told me he heared it rainin' this mornin' at three o'clock, and got up to cover his rick over. He'd heared it rainin'. Why, he might ha' bin asleep, an' then that rain would ha' gone down into that rick two foot or more."
That is all. There is no more to tell of the old man's summer, nothing for July and August. But in September we get a glance back to the past harvest, a glance round at the earliest autumn prospects, and a strange suggestion of the first-class importance of these things in the life of country labouring folk. In brief compass, the talk runs rapidly over many points of interest.
September 6.—For if "the fly" was not on our seedling cabbage, as we were inclined to fear, it had certainly ruined sundry sowings of turnips, both in this garden and down there where Bettesworth lived.
"We can't help it," so he philosophized, "and I don't care if we get enough for ourselves, though I should ha' liked to have more." But "Hammond says he's turnips be all spiled, and Porter's brother what lives over here at this cot" (the brother, that is, of Porter, who lives over here), "he bin down to Sussex harvestin' for the same man I worked for so many years. Seven weeks. But then he bin hoein'.... He was tellin' me his master down there sowed hunderd an' twenty acres o' swedes, and never saved twenty of 'em. Fly took 'em all, and he had to drill again with turnips. Swedes, and same with the mangol'.
"He says they've had it as hot down there as we have here. But, straw! There was some straw, by all accounts. Young Collison what lives over opposite me was 'long with 'n. Seven weeks he" (which?) "was away, but it seems he had a bit of a miff with his wife, and went off unbeknownst to her. She went to the relievin' officer, and he told her they'd find 'n, if she'd go into the union. He was off harvestin'. He told me o' Sunday he thought 't 'd do her good."
"Who was she?"
"Gal from Reading. He was up that way somewhere for 'leven year, in a brick-works. And she thought very likely as he was gone off into some brick-works again; but he was down in Sussex, harvestin'."
September 21.—Though only two weeks later, there is distinct autumn in the next fragment, and yet perhaps for me only, because of the picture it calls up. I remember a very still Saturday afternoon, a sky curtained by quiet cloud, the air motionless, a grey mist stealing into the lane that leads down into the heart of the valley. Certainly it was an autumn day.
As he always did on Saturdays, Bettesworth had swept up the garden paths with extra care, and on this afternoon had taken the sweepings into the lane, to fill up a rut there. Upon my going out to see him, he chuckled.