Bettesworth straightened up from his work.
"Ah, that's what everybody bin sayin'."
"Well, it looks uncommonly like coming."
"Ah, it do. Didn't it look black there, along about nine or ten o'clock this mornin'? I thought then we was goin' to have some snow, an' no mistake." He chuckled grimly and continued, "I dunno how we shall git on if it comes to that. But there, we've had it before an' got through somehow, and I dessay we shall git through again."
"It's to be hoped so. Anyhow, there seems to be no way of altering it."
"No, sir; there don't. I 'xpect we shall have to put up with it. Bear it an' grumble—that's what we shall have to do. We've had to do that before now."
It was a blessing, I laughed, that we had the right to grumble; but we hardly learnt to like the winter the better for being used to it.
"No; that don't make it none the sweeter, do it? Still, we can't help that. As my old neighbour, Jack Tower, used to say, 'Puverty en't no crime, but 'tis a great ill-convenience.'" The touch of epigram in Tower's saying seemed to please Bettesworth, and his speech flowed out with a smooth undulating balance as he repeated slowly, tasting the syllables: "No, cert'nly, puverty en't no crime; but it is a very ill-convenient thing, an' no mistake."
To the same period as the foregoing piece belongs an undated fragment, which tells how news came to Bettesworth of a certain boy's being bitten by a dog. "Have he bit'n much?" was the first eager exclamation, followed by, "These here messin' dawgs! There's too many of 'em, snappin' and yappin' about. I don't like 'em!"
Then he went on, "I don't see what anybody wants to keep dogs for, interferin' with anybody. Why, there's Kesty's dog up there—look at that dog of he's! Why, that dog of he's, he've bit three or four of 'em. He bit the postman two or three times, till they sent to 'n from the Post Office to tell 'n 'less he mind to keep his dog tied up he'd have to send an' fetch his letters hisself.... Nasty sly sort o' dog he is, no mistake. He goes slinkin' an' prowlin' about up there; he's never tied up. And he don't make no sound, ye know. No, you'll never hear 'n make no noise; but he'll have ye. And he en't partic'lar, neither, about lettin' of ye go by, even if it's on the highroad, onless he've a mind to. He'll come slinkin' round, an goo for ye, 's likely as not."