g hedges. But this occupied him only from seven in the
morning until five in the afternoon. In the margin outside these
hours--starting at five or earlier and keeping on until dark--he was
helping the two small-holders, one after the other, to make their hay
and get the ricks built. Then the ricks required thatching, and Turner
thatched them. In the meantime he was getting together a little rick of
his own for his donkey's use, carrying home in bags the longer grass
which he had mowed in the rough places of people's gardens or had
chopped off in hedgerows near his home. A month later he was harvesting
for the small-holders, and again there was rick-thatching for him to do.
"That's seven I've done," he remarked to me, on the day when he finished
the last one. "But didn't the rain stop you this morning?" I asked, for
rain had begun heavily about nine o'clock. He laughed. "No.... We got'n
covered in somehow. Had to sramble about, but he was thatched afore the
rain come."

Later still he was threshing some of this corn with a flail. I heard of
it with astonishment. "A flail?" "Yes," he said; "my old dad put me to
it when I was seventeen, so I _had_ to learn." He seemed to think little
of it. But to me threshing by hand was so obsolete and antiquated a
thing as to be a novelty; nor yet to me only, for a friend to whom I
mentioned the matter laughed, and asked if I had come across any knights
in armour lately.

One autumn, when he was doing some work for myself, he begged for a day
or two away in order to take a job at turf-cutting. When he returned on
the third or fourth day, he said: "Me and my nipper" (a lad of about
sixteen years old) "cut sixteen hundred this time." Now, lawn-turfs are
cut to a standard size, three feet by one, wherefore I remarked: "Why,
that's nearly a mile you have cut." "Oh, is it?" he said. "But it didn't
take long. Ye see, I had the nipper to go along with the edgin' tool in
front of me, and 'twan't much trouble to get 'em up."

He could not keep on for me regularly. The thought of Mr. S----'s work
waiting to be done fidgeted him. "When I was up there last he was
talkin' about fresh gravellin' all his paths. I said to'n, 'If I was you
I should wait anyhow till the leaves is down--they'll make the new
gravel so ontidy else.' So they would, sure. I keeps puttin' it off. But
I shall ha' to go. I sold'n a little donkey in the summer, and he's
hoofs'll want parin' again. I done 'em not so long ago....