8 IDLEHURST : 



rheumatic years are getting too strong for him, 

 and threaten altogether to stop his shaky old hands 

 at their superannuated hedging and ditching, and 

 to send him to the Union for his little end of 

 leisure. 



All the way down the sandy road the south wind 

 met me steadily in the face, a breath like April. The 

 chaffinches trilled their ceaseless little roulade in 

 every hedge-oak, a blackbird was singing in the copse 

 at the Tanyard corner. The distance lay like a sea 

 of hazy blue, the nearer wooded ridges standing like 

 islands in the vaporous levels : everything persuaded 

 to a quiet mind, conscious of winter behind one and 

 life stirring before. But as I went, the thought of 

 oldTomsett would now and again disperse the pleasant 

 influences of the day. The old fellow has seen so 

 many springs like this, so many high summers, so 

 many nipping winters ; he has lived cleanly and 

 honestly eighty years ; has raised and got so many 

 quarters of corn, himself always within distance of 

 absolute want, nearly starved in the old war-times. 

 He has brought up sons ; two of them soldiers, dead 

 in India, one vanished in Manitoba ; girls who married 

 well or ill, died or drifted into London. He never 

 poached ; he very rarely was drunk. Now, crooked 

 with rheumatism, and utterly exhausted with long 



