"It is a happier life, too, I should say."
"Aw! I an't ayerd nort about that," he returned.
"And who ever heard of a starving thatcher?"
"Young fellow," he sighed, "there soon will be no thatchers to starve. Tez a lost art is thatching. I am the last of my family to follow the trade, and we can go back three hundred years."
"Then thatch is dying out?"
"Yes, chiefly on the score of it being hard to 'dout' in case of fire."
"'Dout' is a strange old word. It means extinguish, I take it," said I.
"To be sure—extinguished. Maybe you've heard the story about the Devon gal who went to London as a maid and when she told the mistress she had 'douted' the kitchen fire she was told to say 'extinguished' in future, and not use such ill-sounding words. 'Ess, mum,' she said, 'and shall I sting-guish the old cat before I go to bed?'"
The thatcher laughed in his deep chest.