A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 255 



As I was counting the six or seven greengages on 

 the eastern wall of the fruit quarter, I saw the Rector 

 coming up the " twitten " with Dr. Culpeper and 

 General Aske. I met them on the lawn, and we held 

 our conference under the beeches mostly upon 

 parochial polity of a rather minute nature, such as 

 arranging a common line of action in the matter of 

 the new lamps which the Progressives want to put up 

 in Deadman's Lane, and of the mending of the Mill 

 Lane footpath ; but with more human interest when 

 the Doctor told the Rector about some of his cases. 

 Old Mrs. Hillman is dying at last, through days 

 and weeks of delirium ; under the shadow of death 

 all the ordinary virtues of a worthy old age seem to 

 fall from her. Her daughter and granddaughter are 

 probably injured for life by the burden of nursing her. 

 It is a grim ending ; but one much commoner than 

 the moralists conceive. And sudden death at eighteen 

 has delivered Sarah Bennett from lengthened sickness, 

 by haemorrhage in the early stages of " decline." 

 There are cases still to be watched by the two 

 physicians : when the Doctor goes to finish his in- 

 terrupted round, the Rector goes with him, silent, his 

 brows bent. He has ceased long ago to hold the 

 common belief in a necessary inverse ratio between 



