A Rally 
cab, there was old Tom in the ditch again. 
He’d crawled back. ‘ Damn it,’ he said, ‘I'd 
sooner bide there an’ drown than I’d take a 
favour from that man!” * 
I don’t think Mr. Smith realised that he had 
been repeating a folk-tale. He had probably 
heard it in just the same way himself, and it 
seemed fairly illustrative of old Tom’s charaéter. 
He went on: 
“Did I ever tell ye how your aunt Susan 
county-courted him? She was a very extrava- 
gant woman, his wife was. . . . And of course, 
where a man couldn’t keep a regular job there 
was a good deal o’ lost time. . . . One time he 
ast me if I couldn’t give ’n a job o’ work. Yes, 
I says; he could split some wood your aunt 
Susan wanted for her bread oven. . . . So after 
he’d bin at it about two hours his two daughters 
come down to the shop with a written order for 
some bread, and loaf-sugar, and gammon of 
bacon. Plums and currants I think there was 
too. . . . So Susan come out to me with the 
paper. ‘ Have ye got old Tom at work for ye, 
then?’ she says. ‘ Yes,’ I says, ‘he bin here a 
little while.’ ‘ Well, look at this.’ ‘ That’s 
pretty good,’ I says, ‘ when he en’t earnt nothin’ 
yet.” So she went back an’ told the gals they 
could have some bread and some loaf-sugar, but 
* Note C, Appendix. 
155 
