I went on that afternoon to pass an hour in the churchyard, and finding
an old man in labourer's clothes resting on a tomb, I sat down and
entered into conversation with him. He was seventy-nine, he told me, and
past work, and he had three shillings a week from the parish; but he was
very deaf and it fatigued me to talk to him, and seeing the church open
I went in. On previous visits I had had a good deal of trouble to get
the key, and to find it open now was a pleasant surprise. An old woman
was there dusting the seats, and by and by, while I was talking with
her, the old labourer came stumping in with his ponderous, iron-shod
boots and without taking off his old, rusty hat, and began shouting at
the church-cleaner about a pair of trousers he had given her to mend,
which he wanted badly. Leaving them to their arguing I went out and
began studying the inscriptions on the stones, so hard to make out in
some instances; the old man followed and went his way; then the
church-cleaner came out to where I was standing. "A tiresome old man!"
she said. "He's that deaf he has to shout to hear himself speak, then
you've got to shout back--and all about his old trousers!"

"I suppose he wants them," I returned, "and you promised to do them, so
he has some reason for going at you about it."

"Oh no, he hasn't," she replied. "The girl brought them for me to mend,
and I said, 'Leave them and I'll do them when I've time'--how did I know
he wanted them in a hurry? A troublesome old man!"

By and by, taking a pair of spectacles out of her pocket, she put them
on, and going down on her knees she began industriously picking the old,
brown, dead moss out of the lettering on one side of the tomb. "I'd like
to know what it says on this stone," she said.