LIFE IN THE HUT 



293 



One day I found her groaning in the kitchen^ 

 and asked what ailed her. " It's my rheumatics ; 

 they do crucify me that crool ! " And then she 

 told how she had often worked in the fields in wet 

 weather, topping and tailing turnips and suchlike 

 work, soaked through and through, and on one worst 

 day of all in thin boots : " My thick ones was gone 

 to be mended." 



Somebody belonging to her had been in the 

 army, and my boots were blacked on the doorstep 

 with a small old soldier's kit boot-brush. She had 

 also picked up some military technicalities, for I 

 remember one day when I sat down to dinner, and 

 she had just finished setting the table by putting 

 on the salt and mustard, that she smiled with an 

 air of conscious satisfaction as of all duties happily 

 completed, and said, " There ! now you've got all your 

 acuterments." 



It is one of the perennial griefs of the garden 

 that it cannot grow the White Lily. It is a lime 

 and loam-loving plant ; yet one patch in the narrow 

 border between the front of the Hut and the stone- 

 paved path always does well. When the border was 

 made I gave that end a good deep dressing of lime 

 rubbish, both for the sake of the Lily and of its 

 next neighbour, the Knaphill variety of Pyrus japonica. 

 This grand form of an always good shrub cannot 

 be too highly praised. The flowers are splendidly 

 rich in colour ; they are so large, and the petals of 



