"What! He en't got loose, is he, sir? Oh dear, oh dear! That do look bad! Never can let 'n go like that, can us, sir?" Gradually his memory began harking back to earlier instances of our difficulty. "'Tis like when I helped Mr. Franks puttin' wires up for he's ras'berries. We had just such a bother as this. Fast 's we got one tight we loosened another. We did git in a pucker over 'm, an' no mistake. I remember I told Bill Harris down 'ere what a bother we'd bin 'avin', and he says, 'Ah, I knows you must 've had a job.' He'd had just such a bother hisself, on'y he had all the proper tools an' everything. He borried Mr. Mills's wire-strainers, and when he got the fust wire up—oh, he thought he was gettin' on capital. He seemed like makin' a reg'lar good job of it. But when he come to put up t'other wire—oh dear, oh dear!—he got in such a hobble. 'There,' he says, 'I was ashamed for anybody to see it, and I come away an' left it.'"
I was in the humour to be glad of other people's perplexities, and I laughed.
"Oh, he came away and left it, did he?"
"Yes. Don't ye see, 'twas a reg'lar fence, 'tween his garden an' the next. An' he thought for to have it all jest right an' proper. But everybody as come by could see, and he was that put out about it that he come away an' left it."
"Bother the stuff! I hope we shan't have to go and leave this."
"I dunno how we be to do it. There, 'tis to be done, we knows that, 'cause I've seen it.... No, I en't never see 'em a puttin' of it up; but I've seen the fences after it bin put up, an' very nice they looks wi' the wire all as straight.... But how they doos it, I'm sure I don't know."
We finished at last, after a fashion, and Bettesworth went on to train and tie the briars. If work had not been scarce, it would have been cruel to let him undertake such a job. To make up for his defective sight, it was his way to grope out blindly for a thing just before him, and find it by touch; and in dealing so with this briar, with its terrible thorns, his hands got into a pitiable state. He showed me them on resuming his work the next morning, saying,
"I shan't be sorry when I done wi' this customer. His nails is too sharp for my likin'. When I went 'ome yesterday and washed my hands, goo! didn't they smart wherever the cold water touched one o' they scratches! My ol' gal says to me, 'What be ye hushin' about?' 'So 'd you hush,' I says, 'if you'd bin handlin' they roses all the aft'noon, same as me.' I tried with gloves, but they wa'n't no good. You can't git to tie, with gloves on."
March 26, 1896, 10.30 a.m.—There are deep cloud-shadows, and rapid sun-glints lighting up the shadows like daffodils shining against grass. And there is the roar of a big wind in the air, and majestic clouds are sailing across, and beyond these the sky is a dazzling blue.
All growing things seem busy. Everywhere on the land men are at work; the swift sunshine glistens on the white of their shirts, and shows them up against the darkness of the new plough-furrows or the freshly dug garden-ground.