I said, "There would have been no talks for me with Bettesworth if he had touched you!"
"No. He'd have killed me. I ketched up the fust thing I could see, an' that was the prong, and 't last I was afraid I'd killed he. A bad-tempered little card he was, though. They be worse than an intire 'orse.... They be worse than an intire 'orse."
He was dropping into meditation, standing limply with drooping arms, and fixing an absent-minded look upon his job. For his memory was straying among the circumstances of forty years ago. Then suddenly he straightened up again and continued,
"While I'd got the prong, Brown heard the scufflin', and come runnin' down. 'What the plague's up now?' he says. 'I dunno,' I says; 'I shall either kill 'n or conquer 'n.' ... But he was a bad-tempered one. He wouldn't let ye go into the stable to do 'n. I had to get 'n out and tie his head to a ring in the wall, high up, an' then I could pay 'n as I mind to. Brown says at last, 'That's enough;' he says, 'I won't have it.' But Cooper says, 'You let 'n do as he likes.' And I says, 'If I don't have my own way with 'n, you'll have to do 'n yourself.' But a good little thing on the road, ye know. Quiet! And wouldn't touch no vittles nor drink away from home, drive 'n where you mind. Never was a better little thing to go. I think Cooper give eighteen or twenty pound for 'n. But a nasty little customer—wouldn't let ye go near 'n in the stable. They jockeys thought they was goin' to have 'n. They all said they thought he'd be a rum 'n, and so he was, too.
"One time Mrs. Cooper come into the yard with a green silk dress on, and he put his head round and grabbed it" (near the waist, to judge by Bettesworth's gesture), "and tore out a great piece—a yard or more. Do what I would, I couldn't help laughin', though she was a testy sort o' woman. And she did fly about, the servant said, when she went indoors.
"But I thought I'd killed 'n that time with the prong. Sweat, he did, and bellered like a bull; and 't last I give 'n one on the head. I made sure I'd killed 'n. I was afraid, then. I thought I'd hit too hard. And I sweat as much as he did then."
XII
December 2, 1901.—In view of the hatred in which Bettesworth had previously held the workhouse infirmary, and which he was destined to renew later, it is interesting to observe how favourably the place impressed him about this time, when he visited a friend there.
The friend, whom I will rename "Tom Loveland," had been taken to the infirmary in October, suffering with the temporary increase of some obscure chronic disorder which to this day cripples him. Bettesworth had gone to see him on Sunday afternoon, December 1, in company with Harriett Loveland, the man's wife.
The patient still lay there, "on his back," I heard on the Monday.