"Well—he's jest the age; jest on forty. I says to 'n, 'Some of 'em 'd go for you, if they knowed you was wantin' frost.' He laughed. 'We all speaks for ourselves, don't we?' he says."
Then Bettesworth added, "There, I never could have a better neighbour 'n he is. Always jest the same. He looks out for me, too."
I grieve that I have forgotten the particular instance of looking out: it was a case of Kid's mother telling him that she was short of some commodity or other—hot water, perhaps, for tea; upon which Kid said, "Well, see there's some left for old Freddy." On another occasion, "I had," Bettesworth remarked, "my favourite dish for supper last night—pig's chiddlins," and he owed the treat to his neighbours. "They'd killed their pig, and old Nanny brought me in a nice hot plateful. I did enjoy 'em: they was so soft an' nice. There's nothin' I be more fond of, if I knows who cleaned 'em. But I en't tasted any since I give up keepin' pigs myself."
I could not spare many hours a day for it, so that our turfing work dragged out wearisomely; but throughout it Bettesworth's conversation maintained the same homely inconspicuous character. Once it was about the celery in the garden: "'Tis the nicest celery I ever had—so crisp, an' so well-bleached. I've had two sticks." (He had been told to help himself.) "Last night I put some in a saucepan an' boiled it up; an' then a little pepper an' salt and a nice bit o' butter." He has no teeth now for eating it uncooked; "or else at one time I could," he assured me.
One after another his simple domestic arrangements were talked over. He made no fire at home in the morning; Nanny gave him a cup of tea; and so he saved coal, which he had been buying from one of the village shops, half a hundredweight at a time. But the price was exorbitant, and Bettesworth had found a way of buying for fourpence the hundredweight cheaper. And "fo'pence—that's a lot. Well, there's the price of a loaf soon saved." "And a loaf," I put in, "lasts you...?" "Lasts me a long time, and then I gives the crusts and odd bits to Kid for his pig.... One way and another I makes it all up to 'em."
Of a well-to-do neighbour, "He don't shake off that lumbago in his back yet, so he says.... Ah, he have bin a strong man. So he ought to be, the way he eats. His sister was sayin' only t'other day how every mornin' he'll eat as big a plateful o' fat bacon as she puts before 'n."
A difficulty with a turf which was cut too thick at one corner made a queer diversion. The old man was wearing new boots, and already I knew how he had bargained for them at Wilby's shop, getting a pair of cork socks, besides laces and dubbin, thrown in for his money. And now, this little corner of grass obstinately sticking up, "Let's see what Mr. Wilby 'll do for 'n," said Bettesworth, and he stamped his new boot down hard and the thickened sod yielded. "Do they hurt you at all?" I asked then. "No," he said, "not no more'n you may expect. New boots always draws your feet a bit. That one wrung my foot a little yest'day. When I got home, 'fore ever I lit my candle, I'd unlaced 'n and fetched 'n off. I flung 'n down. But I be very well pleased with 'em. 'Tis jest across here by the seam where they hurts.... No, I en't laced 'em tight. I don't hold with that, for new boots. Of course they en't leather; can't be for the money. When you've paid for the makin' what is there left for leather, out of five-and-sixpence? No, they can't be leather....
"Little Tim" (Bettesworth's five-year-old chum) "jest got some new uns, with nails in 'em. Nex' pair he has, he says, he's goin' to have 'em big, with big nails, jest like his father's. 'You ben't man enough yet, Tim,' I says. But he got some little gaiters too. 'Now I be ready,' he says, 'if it snows or anything.'"
As a rule we endured in silence the minor discomforts incidental to work like ours, in a raw winter air. But there were exceptions, as when we agreed in hating to handle the tools with our hands so caked over with the black earth. To me, indeed, the spade felt as if covered with sandpaper, so that sometimes it was less painful to use fingers, although of course they did but get the more thickly encrusted with soil by that device. This state of our hands was the cause of another small distress: one could not touch a pocket-handkerchief. And of this also we spoke, once, when I all but laughed aloud at what Bettesworth said.
It began with his testily remarking, "My nose is more plag' than enough!" There was, indeed, and had been for a long time, a glistening drop at the end of it.