Thoroughly to Bettesworth's taste, again, as it is to the groom's taste to talk of horses, or to the architect's to discuss new buildings, was a little narrative he had of another neighbour's work in the fields. "Porter's brother," he said, "started down there at Priestley's Friday mornin', and got the sack dinner-time." How? Well, it was a job at hoeing young "plants" in the field, at which the man got on very well at first; but presently he came to "four rows o' cabbage and then four rows o' turnips," and there the ground was so full with weeds that to hoe it properly was impossible. The hoe would strike into a tangle of "lily," or bindweed, with tendrils trailing "as fur as from here to that tree" (say four or five yards); and when pulled at, the lily proved to have turned three or four times round a plant, which came away with it. "So when the foreman come and saw, he says, 'I dunno, Porter--I almost thinks you better leave off.' 'Well, I'd jest as soon,' Porter says, 'for I can't seem to satisfy _myself_.'" So he left off, and the foreman supposed they would have to plough the crop in and plant again.
It was pleasant enough to me to sit in the afternoon sunshine and hear this talk of village folk and outdoor doings, but after a little while I was called away, and did not see Bettesworth's departure. I should have watched it, if I had known the truth; for, once he had got outside the gate, he had set foot for the last time in this garden.
_June 9, 1905._--Some three weeks later, not having in the interval seen anything of Bettesworth, I was on the point of starting to look him up, when his niece came to the door. She had called expressly to beg that I would go and visit him, because he seemed anxious to see me. He was considerably worse, in her opinion; indeed, for the greater part of the week--in which there had been cold winds with rain--he had kept his bed and lain there dozing. Whenever he woke up, he had the impression either that it was early morning or else late evening; and once or twice he had asked, quite early in the day, whether Jack was come home yet.
On reaching the cottage I found him in his bed upstairs. Certainly he had lost strength since I saw him. At first his voice was husky, and he was inclined to cry at his own feebleness; soon, however, he recovered his habitual quick, quiet speech, though a touch of weariness and debility remained in it. Stripping back the sleeve of his bed-gown he exhibited his arm: the muscle had disappeared, and the arm was no bigger than a young boy's. He shed tears at the sight, himself. Nor was he without pain. As he lay there that morning his legs, he said, had felt "as if somebody was puttin' skewers into 'em, right up the shins"; but he had rubbed vaseline over them, and after about half an hour the pain diminished. The doctor, visiting, had said "Poor old gentleman"; and, to him, not much more. "Old age--worn out," was the simple diagnosis he had furnished downstairs, to Liz.