I'd used to't. I be
so plaguy bad wi' th' rhumatiz in my back." Benjy paused, in hopes of
drawing the farmer at once on the subject of his ailment without
further direct application.

"Ah, I see as you bean't quite so lissom[9] as you was," replied the
farmer, with a grim smile, as he lifted the latch of his door. "We
bean't so young as we was, nother[10] on us, wuss luck."

[9] #Lissom#: limber.

[10] #Nother#: neither.

THE "WISE MAN'S" SURROUNDINGS.

The farmer's cottage was very like those of the better class of
peasantry in general. A snug chimney-corner with two seats and a small
carpet on the hearth, an old flint gun and a pair of spurs over the
fire-place, a dresser[11] with shelves, on which some bright pewter
plates and crockery-ware were arranged, an old walnut table, a few
chairs and settles,[12] some framed samplers[13] and an old print or
two, and a book-case with some dozen volumes on the walls, a rack with
flitches[14] of bacon and other stores fastened to the ceiling, and
you have the best part of the furniture. No sign of occult art is to
be seen, unless the bundles of dried herbs hanging to the rack and in
the ingle,[15] and the row of labelled vials on one of the shelves
betoken it.

[11] #Dresser#: a sideboard or cupboard.

[12] #Settle#: a bench.

[13] #Sampler#: a pattern for needlework.

[14] #Flitch#: a side of bacon.

[15] #Ingle#: chimney-corner.

Tom played about with some kittens who occupied the hearth, and with a
goat who walked demurely in at the open door, while their host and
Benjy spread the table for dinner--and was soon engaged in conflict
with the cold meat, to which he did much honor. The two old men's talk
was of old comrades and their deeds, mute inglorious Miltons[16] of
the Vale, and of the doings thirty years back--which didn't interest
him much, except when they spoke of the making of the canal; and then,
indeed, he began to listen with all his ears, and learned, to his no
small wonder, that his dear and wonderful canal had not been there
always--was not, in fact, as old as Benjy or Farmer Ives, which caused
a strange commotion in his small brain.

[16] #"Mute, inglorious Miltons"#: see Gray's "Elegy."

After dinner Benjy called attention to a wart which Tom had on the
knuckles of his hand, and which the family doctor had been trying his
skill on without success, and begged the farmer to charm it away.
Farmer Ives looked at