A Farmer’s Life 
Thus there was Mrs. Jerome, at a certain turn- 
pike gate. Carrying her needlework to Frimley 
—Mrs. Cresswell’s or Mrs. Burrell’s—Ann had 
to pass the “ pike,” where dwelt Mr. Jerome, the 
keeper of it, a little short, very stout man. And 
his wife ‘“‘ was just such another,” only more so. 
Such a nice kind woman. Invariably, after Ann 
had gone through, Mrs. Jerome had a bunch of 
flowers for her when she came back. Mrs. 
Cresswell was another who never let the dress- 
maker go away without flowers. 
One odd thing occurred about the end of this 
period, or perhaps at some short return to it. 
The date can be fixed: it was the 17th of April, 
1860; Ann’s father being dead then and the 
Longmans being at Farnborough Hill. Accord- 
ing to Ann’s own memory it was at three o’clock 
on a May morning—probably she was a little 
wrong in her hour, as in her date, but evidently 
she was remembering a spring dawn in the old 
farm-house—when she, with my mother to help, 
had arisen to get on with some urgent needlework. 
As the two were settling down in the quiet 
bedroom and enjoying the early morning, sud- 
denly the peace was broken by yells and hubbub 
growing into prolonged riot, from the Hatches—the 
meadows out Frimley way, just beyond the South- 
Eastern railway station. It was the noise of the 
crowds at the prize-fight between Sayers and 
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