36 IDLEHURST : 



have heard on ; well, there was four chaps there as 

 called themselves the Flyaway Mowers ; they said 

 nobody could cut so much in a week as they could. 

 They'd got a barrel of beer of their own under a tree, 

 and that. I was mowin' after them, and I wasn't 

 not very far behind 'em, all day." 



I can believe it, for all the shrunken limbs and 

 knotted rheumatic hands. After a longish silence, 

 sacred perhaps to waking memories, the old man 

 hobbles across the room to the fire to shift the kettle 

 and relight his stumpy clay. " I aches," he explains, 

 as he settles stiffly back into his seat ; " I be that 

 stiff-like in the knees." 



I suggest it is time he took a rest ; he began so 

 early. 



" I started on work when I was turned seven/' he 

 says. " I had to walk from Hornlye to Blackhatch 

 to my work every day, for eighteenpence. a week ; 

 sometimes, hayin' and such like, I'd not be in bed 

 three nights together; just lay down in the stable 

 for an hour or so : and then get thirty shillin's for 

 six months of that." 



He stops to draw at his rattling pipe, and then 

 goes on : " That was when the work'us used to be 

 where Muster Dickes lives now Dickes' Folly, they 

 calls it: it was called the Clappers, then. All the 



