us where his
lungs are?" Jones made an unsuccessful search. "Well, can we see where
his heart is?" and so on--all failures. Finally and scornfully, "Well,
perhaps you can show the gentlemen where his tail is!"

The village thatcher, Obadiah B., was an ancient, but efficient
workman when engaged upon cottages or farm buildings, for ricks
require only a comparatively temporary treatment. He was paid by the
"square" of 100 feet, and, although he was "no scholard," and never
used a tape, he was quite capable of checking by some method I could
never fathom my own measurements with it. The finishing touches to his
work were adjusted with the skill of an artist and the accuracy of a
mathematician; and a beautiful bordering of "buckles" in an elaborate
pattern of angles and crosses--"Fantykes" (Van Dycks), his
hard-working daughter Sally called them--completed the job. He
"reckoned" that each thatching would last at least twenty years, and
being well stricken in years, or "getting-up-along" as they say in
Hampshire, he would add gloomily, "_I_ shall never do it no more." He
was a true prophet, for on every building he thatched for me the work
outlived him, and even after the lapse of thirty years is not
completely worn out.

Passing him and his son in the village street, outside his house, when
he was packing fruit for market, I heard him, his voice raised for my
benefit, thus admonishing his son who was casually using some of the
newer hampers: "Allus wear out the old, fust." But I must not
attribute to his son the unfilial retort which another youth made
under similar circumstances, when told to fetch some more hampers from
a shed some distance away: "No, father, _you_ fetch them, allus wear
out the old fust, you know."

Occasional visitors come with goods for sale in quest of orders, and
some are very persistent and difficult to get rid of. A man professing
to sell some artificial fertilizer called upon me with a small tin
sample box, containing a mixture which emitted a most villainous
odour. He sniffed with appreciation at the compound, probably
consisting of some nitrogenous material such as wool treated with
sulphuric or hydrochloric acid, and began his address. He had not gone
far before I remembered a story of a similar person in Hampshire. This
man had called upon the leading farmers, and offered them a bargain,
explaining that some trucks of artificial manure that he had consigned
to Walton Station had been sent