AN OLD RETAINER 



his habit of body and brain was too slow and deliber- 

 ate for the attainment of much success with the 

 fowling-piece. I have seen him take a steady pot-shot 

 from over a hedge at a rabbit feeding in the grass, and 

 I believe he has been known to shoot rooks sitting ; 

 but beyond these attainments his ambitions seldom 

 ranged. Fox-hunting he viewed only from the dis- 

 tance, but it is certain that the fox itself was as sacred 

 an animal in his eyes as in those of the most staunch 

 supporter of the county hounds. 



I can always recall Master Jessey busying himself, in 

 his deliberate way, in the stone-flagged courtyard of 

 the old brown sandstone house to which he had attached 

 himself. Sandy, the setter, lay outside his kennel in 

 the sunshine, watching affectionately and with some 

 interest the old man as he moved slowly from the brew- 

 house to the pigeon-house, or from the walled garden, 

 where the beehives stood, to and from the court. He 

 never wore trousers to the end of his life. Drab small- 

 clothes, with gaiters to match, clothed his nether limbs. 

 His deep-skirted coat of the same material never altered, 

 as long as I can remember him, in its old-fashioned 

 cut. His grey head was invariably crowned by a tall 

 grey chimney-pot hat. His neckerchief was folded 

 twice round his neck and tied in a bow in front. He 

 was a tall, heavy, big-framed old fellow, grey-eyed, 

 somewhat fleshy of face, clean-shaved of course, with 

 scraps of whisker high up on the cheeks, reminding 

 one irresistibly of the period of Waterloo. The old 

 man always spoke in the homely rural vernacular of 

 Warwickshire and Northamptonshire, upon the borders 

 of which he lived. He called, for instance, a gate a 

 "geeat," a rabbit a "rawbut," an acorn an "akkern," 

 a perch (fish) a "pearch." A heron he termed a 

 "mollyern," the rightful derivation of which it is 



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