8 VILLAGE ENGLAND 



shilling or the Squire s beef at Christmas was a notable 

 event. 



Old George was not professionally a mower : he was 

 famous only for his skill with cows. He had an almost 

 maternal instinct, in their regard. He knew they were 

 going to be ill before they were ill : and had the healing 

 hand. They mooed when they saw him as a cow moos 

 for her calf. He was at home in the low thatched shed. 

 Treading, in the muck, in the warm smell of the beasts, 

 he wished for no other dancing floor, no other platform. 

 He had forgotten what schooling he had ever received 

 and could neither read nor write ; and therefore perhaps 

 forgot nothing. On many occasions he was sent off to 

 the nearest town it was nine miles away to do com 

 missions for his master and was told what was wanted 

 once. If the list was as long as a cow s tail, it made no 

 difference : he never forgot anything, not even if he 

 descended from the pony trap on the way and drank a 

 pint of beer, while the pony grazed on the broad margin 

 of green grass at the edge of the road. The pony could 

 afford to eat grass, for if the shrewd eye of his driver 

 detected the least rise in the toad (and in that flat country 

 hills are scarcely perceptible) he allowed the pony to walk. 

 There was no hurry. An hour and forty minutes wasn t 

 bad going for the journey. He would tell them to give 

 the pony a feed at the inn, while he did his shoppings, and 

 if all went well, (a proviso common on his lips) he would 

 be to home before dark. 



Such men seemed too hardy and too free from self-pity 

 to feel pain as other people think they feel it. Old 

 George was thatching a rick one day in his later years and 

 slipped ; and one of the sharp stakes drove into his eye 

 and totally destroyed it. We all know the sensitiveness 

 of the eye, but &quot; so small a thing tumultuous there &quot; was 



