ummer night all
round it, that, of course, I had to go down the hill and investigate it.
The group I joined was, it turned out, watching a bicyclist who lay
unconscious in somebody's arms, while a doctor fingered at a streaming
wound in the man's forehead, and washed it, and finally stitched it up.
The bicycle--its front wheel buckled by collision with the Vicarage
gatepost--stood against the gate, and two or three cushions lay in the
hedge; for the Vicar had come out to the man's assistance, and had sent
for the doctor, and it was the Vicar himself, old and grey, but steady,
who now held his library lamp for the doctor's use. The rest of us stood
looking on, one of us at least feeling rather sick at the sight, and all
of us as useless as the night-moths which came out from the trees and
fluttered round the lamp. At last, when all was done, and the injured
man could be moved, there rose up a hitherto unnoticed fellow who had
been supporting him, and I recognized one of our village labourers. He
looked faint, and tottered to a chair which the Vicar had ready, and
gulped at some brandy, for he, too, had been overcome by sight of the
surgery. But it was to him that the task of sitting in the dusty road
and being smeared with blood had fallen.

And this quiet acceptance of the situation, recognizing that he if
anyone must suffer, and take the hard place which soils the clothes and
shocks the feelings, gives the clue to the average labourer's temper. It
is really very curious to think of. Rarely can a labourer afford the
luxury of a "change." Wet through though his clothes may be, or
blood-stained, or smothered with mud or dust, he must wear them until he
goes to bed, and must put them on again as he finds them in the morning;
but this does not excuse him in our eyes from taking the disagreeable
place. Still less does it excuse him in his own eyes. If you offer to
help, men of this kind will probably dissuade you. "It'll make yer
clothes all dirty," they say; "you'll get in such a mess." So they
assume the burden, sometimes surly and swearing, oftener with a
good-tempered jest.

To anything with a touch of humour in it they will leap forward like
schoolboys. I am reminded of a funny incident one frosty morning, when
patches of the highway were slippery as glass. Preceding me along the
road was a horse and cart, driven by a boy who stood upright in the
cart, and seemed not to notice how the horse's hoofs were skidding; and