At the period we are dealing with, this cottage had a poverty-stricken appearance, upon which Bettesworth himself had been wont to comment severely, though the place was in reality no worse than others beyond it and elsewhere in the parish. But it had suffered from utter neglect under the previous tenant, a thriftless Irishman, while, after the Irishman left, it stood empty for a time, and looked like falling quite derelict. Then, however, the landlord had a few repairs done, and at the end of September, to my amazement, I heard from Bettesworth that he had taken it. He would save eighteen-pence a week by the change: the new rent was only two shillings.
Ought I to have expostulated? Perhaps I should have done so, but for the queer expression in the old man's face when telling me his intention. There was some shame, but more of dogged defiance. "You think what you like," so I interpreted it--"that's the place I'm going to." He was armed, too, with testimony in favour of the cottage.
"Skinner" (the bricklayer) "says he don't see why it shouldn't make a very nice little place for two. He done up the roof there t'other week, and he ought to know." Later, the old man repeated Skinner's opinion, and added, "I think _I_ can make it comfortable. Ye see, there en't bin nobody to try before."
This was true enough. The Irishman's tenancy had not in any sense improved the cottage. The place could not be worse used, and it might conceivably be fairly habitable in more careful hands.
During the first week in October Bettesworth effected his removal. It was an inauspicious time. He had been counting upon the stream-bed for a roadway along which to cart his things, so as to avoid scrambling up and down the devious pathways and tracks that led to the cottage, but, unfortunately, the stream this week was in flood. A cart might, indeed, have struggled along it, and one was, in fact, bespoken--Jack Crawte's, to wit; but at the appointed time the cart failed to arrive, and upon Bettesworth's going to inquire for it, he discovered that the Crawtes were all gone into the town to the fair.
Next day they promised to come "by-and-by." Bettesworth accepted the promise, but he also chartered two donkey-carts, which were really more suitable for getting out from the first cottage into one lane, and then round and about, up and down, to the head of the gully by Mrs. Skinner's. Farther than that even donkey-carts were useless. For the last and worst hundred yards nothing but a wheelbarrow or a strong back could be of any use.