Thursday," then closing the door quickly, he was gone.

He got my permission to visit his mother and son, both ailing in
Birmingham, and on his return I made inquiries. The boy was better,
but about his mother he said, "I don't take so much notice of she, for
her be regular weared out"--not unkindly or undutifully intended, but
just a plain statement of fact, simply put; for she was a very old
woman, and could not in the course of nature be expected to live much
longer.

That Jim had a tender heart I know, for when we lost a very favourite
horse, one which "you could not put at the wrong job," I found him
weeping and much distressed. Later he said, "When you lose a horse I
reckon it's a double loss, for you haven't got the horse or the
money." My mind being dominated by the unanswerable accuracy of the
latter part of the statement, I did not, for a moment, see that the
first part was fallacious, because, of course, one could not have both
at one and the same time.

He was an excellent ploughman, and considerable skill is demanded to
manage the long wood plough, locally made, and still the best
implement of the sort on the adhesive land of the Vale of Evesham. It
has no wheels, like the ordinary iron plough has, to regulate the
depth and width of the furrow-slice, because in wet weather, if tried
on this almost stoneless land, the wheels become so clogged with mud
and refuse, such as stubble from the previous crop, that they will not
revolve, sliding helplessly involved along the ground. Even the
mould-board is wood, generally pear-tree, to which the mud does not
adhere, as happens with iron. As an old neighbour explained to me,
"You can cut the newest bread with a wooden knife, whereas the doughy