"Old Kid says, 'Don't it make ye dry?' this smoking. 'No,' I says, 'that" (namely, to drink) "en't no good.' Kid don't smoke. Reg'lar old-fashioned card, he is. 'Ten't many young men you'll see like 'n. But he's as reg'lar in his habits as a old married man. Ay, and he's as good, too. 'T least, he's as good to me. So they both be."
"Isn't he to his mother?"
"Ah! an' she to him. No woman couldn't look after a baby better. Every night as soon as he's home and ready to sit down, there's his supper on the table. 'Supper's ready, Kid,' she says. 'So's yourn too, Freddy,' she says to me. 'Ah,' I says, 'Wait a bit, Nanny, till my kettle's boilin'.' Because I always has tea along o' my supper. Kid, he don't have his till after; but I likes mine with my supper. So I tells her to put it in the oven till I'm ready. Cert'nly, my little kettle don't take long to boil. But I shall ha' to get me quarter of a ton o' coal, soon as Chris'mas is over."
A faint memory, for which I have had to grope, restores a mention by Bettesworth of three glasses of grog to which he treated Kid Norris and himself and old Nanny. Perhaps this was at Christmas time; at any rate I am not aware that the season was brightened for him by any other celebration. It passed, and the New Year came in, and still he was living the same broken life, yet telling rather of the few pleasures it contained than of its desolation. I am sure he did not mean to let me know that he was being constantly reminded of his wife, yet the next conversation gives reason to suppose that such was the case.
January 10, 1905.—He had spent two vigorous days in cutting down and sawing into logs an old plum-tree, and grubbing out its roots. That was a job which he might still be left to do without supervision; but I had to assist, when it came to planting a young tree in the vacant space. A pear-tree, this new one was; and he asked, "Was it a 'William' pear?" It was a Doyenne du Comice, I said. His shrug showed that he did not get hold of the name at all, and I fancied him a little contemptuous of such outlandishness; so I added that I had seen some of the pears in a fruiterer's window, and wished to grow the like for myself.
"Ah"—the suggestion was enough. He wondered if that was the sort he had bought for his "poor old gal"; and then he told again how he had given three halfpence apiece for pears to take to her at the infirmary, and would have given sixpence rather than go without them. "And then the poor old gal never tasted 'em.... She wa'n't up there long.... That Blackman what drove the fly that took her ast me about her t'other day. He didn't know" (that she was dead), "or he said he didn't. 'She was only up there three days,' I said. Since then, he've took old Mrs. Cook—Jerry's mother.... Jerry kep' her as long as he could, but 't last she 'ad to go. Yes, he stuck to 'er as long as he could, Jerry did. None o' the others didn't, ye see.... But he had money: there was two hunderd pound, so they said, when his wife's mother died, and nobody couldn't make out what become of it exactly. But Jerry had some, an' purty soon got rid of it. Purty near killed 'n. 'Fore he'd done with it he couldn't stoop to tie up his shoelaces, he was got that bloaty.... I reckon he bides down there by hisself, now."
In that he resembled Bettesworth, then. I asked if Jerry had no wife.
"She died about two year ago. Poor thing—she'd bin through everything; bin to hospitals and all." It was one hop-picking, about nine years ago, and just after she was married, that "they was larkin' about—jest havin' a bit o' fun, ye know; there wasn't no spite in it—and one of 'em swished her right across the eye with a hop-bine.... I s'pose 'twas something frightful, afore she died; 't had eat right into her head."
The old man pondered over the horror, then continued, "There must be something poisonous about hop-bine. Same as with a ear o' corn. How many you sees have lost an eye by an ear o' corn swishin' into it! En't you ever heard of it? I've knowed it, many's a time. There was" (I forget whom he named)—"it jest flicked 'n across the sight, and he went purty near mad wi' the pain of it. Oats is the worst. Well, as you knows, oats is so thin, 't'll stick to the eyeball purty near like paper.... But I'd sooner cut oats than any other; it cuts so sweet. That was always my favourite corn to cut. Cert'nly I en't never had no accident with it. Barley cuts sweet, but 't en't like oats."
The next day's chatter gives one more touch to the picture of Bettesworth's pleasant intercourse with his neighbours at this period. Apropos of nothing at all the old man began his story.