A week earlier (almost to the hour) when I parted from him, he seemed too ill to take his money—too unconscious, I mean. I offered it to his niece, standing at the foot of the bed; but she said, glancing meaningly towards him, "I think he'd like to take it, sir." So I turned to him and put the shillings into his hand, which he held up limply. "Your wages," I said.
For a moment he grasped the silver, then it dropped out on to his bare chest and slid under the bed-gown, whence I rescued it, and, finding his purse under the pillow, put his last wages away safely there.
On the Saturday I saw him, but I think he did not know me: and that was the last time. The thought of him keeps coming, wherever I go in the garden; but I put it aside for fear of spoiling truer because more spontaneous memories of him in time to come.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Author's note. "The Bettesworth Book" (second impression).
[2] A tool of which the iron part resembles that of a garden fork, the handle, however, being socketed into it at right angles, as in a rake.
[3] The earlier portions of this chapter have already appeared in Country Life.