292 HOME AND GAKDEN 



to let her go, but after a few weeks it became clear 

 that her strength was not equal to keeping the house 

 for both of us, and as her knowledge of cooking was 

 less than rudimentary, I had to find for her a home 

 in the village and for myself a more able-bodied 

 helper. Dear old soul, what delicious, inconsequent, 

 good-natured gossip she used to pour forth ; a little 

 difficult to follow, because as a rule all nominatives 

 were omitted ; and as I could not by intuition keep 

 up with the discursive workings of her brain, nor at 

 once grasp the identity indicated by " She," with a 

 fling of the head or jerk of the thumb towards some 

 distant farm ; and as the disjointed fragments of 

 narrative ran into one another, or rather flowed out 

 of one another in a constant flood of small digression, 

 the end of the story left me much where I was at the 

 beginning. 



But I wish I could remember all the odd tricks 

 of speech and local manner of wording. There was 

 one story of a woman who met a toad coming down- 

 stairs. The toad bit the woman in the arm — I 

 could not bear to spoil the story by telling her that 

 toads have no teeth : " And her arm got tJiat bad 

 — there — it was bad, that it was ! She had to have 

 it off, she did ! " This wonderful story came up one 

 day when I came in to tea and found a fine, hand- 

 some toad sitting on the raised brick hearth. It is 

 strange how the country folk still believe in the 

 venom of toads. 



