It was near the close of a cloudless day in the fourth week of that August that Jim, undisturbed by applicants for water, was enjoying his last pipe before starting for home. He was not alone. One of the very old men one knows so well in every village was with him; a survival of the past who will tell you tales of your grandfathers, and end them up with some memory of a grandchild of his own, then living. Death is keeping them in mind, be sure!—will not forget them in the end, even though they may tax his recollection for another decade. This one could remember his childhood better than the events of yesterday, and though he could tell but little of it, was not quite without a record of Waterloo. For he could recall how his father held him up, a child of five, to see the blaze on Crumwen Beacon yander, when they loighted up fires all round about for the news that had come of the great battle across the water. But as for Nelson and Trafalgar, inquired about keenly by Jim, as pages from the same book, he could say nothing of them; they were afower his time. But he minded when they painted up the sign of the Lord Nelson on the roo-ad to th' Castle, with an empty sleeve to his cwo-at; and the painter of un didn't know his trade, and put stoof with th' payunt to ma'ak it show up gay, and look at un now!
"It's a tidy bit o' time too, Master David," said Jim. "Many a year afore ever I was heard tell of."
"Aye well—that's so! But you'll be quite a yoong ma'an, coo-unting by years. Why, I lay you'll be yoonger by many a year than Peter Fox's widow—she that's gone to her sister in Loon'un."
"My old mother at the cottage? Ah, she'll be my age twice told, and a spell thrown in."
"Aye—aye! She's getting on, forward, now you ne'am it. But I mind her when she first came to these parts—just a yoong wench, not long wed—more by token my power missus lay dying at the time.... Noa!—I'd been marrud woonce afower then—marrud to Sarah Tracey—you may ree-ad her ne'am on the sto'an in the graveyard. But for Peter Fox's widow, she was a coomly yoong wench, shooerly!"
He wandered among domestic events, until the dog, feeling he was being taken too little notice of, remonstrated. The substance of his communication, interpreted by Jim, was that it was time to be getting back home. On the road, his opinion was they were going too slow, and he endeavoured to drag his master at a trot. Old David commented on the restlessness of youth.
"But you won't be needing th' yoong poop soon, Master Coupland. That little maid of yowern she'll be coomin' ba-ack, I lay, none so many days ahead."
Here was a chance for Jim to reassure himself.
"For all I could say," said he, "the lassie may be up at the Rectory now. She'd come with her lady, as I make it out; just for the first go off, seeing the old mother's not handy for to nurse her up. Not that there'd be the need for it, to my judgment. These here doctor's stories...."
The old man interrupted him, stopping in the road to speak, with an uplifted impressive finger. "Do'ant ye hearken to none o' they, Master Coupland. They be a main too clever, that they be! Why, I'm not the only ma'an with a tale to tell about they doctors?"