12 IDLEHURST: 



Transparents. He and I have an understanding never 

 to criticise one another in our hobbies, but only in our 

 main businesses so that I never correct his system 

 of pruning (and much else in his long-suffering 

 garden), whilst he, every time he comes to see my 

 paradise, the work of my life, airs some new theory, 

 quaint and fatal, upon rose-budding, or the likes and 

 dislikes of liliums. In return, he would let me 

 make as many false quantities in Virgil as I liked ; 

 and I have a free hand with all the concerns of the 

 parish. Therefore he goes on with his knife, whilst 

 I propound my ideas about old Tomsett at Lycetts. 

 Can we contrive a sort of pensionary holiday for 

 his last year or two, keeping him out of the hedge- 

 bottoms and the House? The Rector, looking 

 reflectively at his radically pruned spurs, tells me 

 that Dr. Culpeper saw him yesterday, and thinks 

 he will be at work again in a day or two, helping 

 with the clearing of Kiln Wood. Then it is to be 

 hoped, as the kindlier year opens, that he may 

 hobble about the fields and find little jobs in hay- 

 time and harvest. There is a small fund in the 

 parish coffers, which will keep the old man in his 

 chimney corner through the fall, providing the 

 eighteenpenny rent, the ounces of tea and sugar 

 and tobacco. And the Doctor says he will need no 



