Certainly he is overdone. Upon my renewing offers of a little help, he became tearful, almost sobbing: "You be the only friend I got.... I bin all over the country," and have faced all sorts of things, "but I _be_ hammer-hacked about, now, no mistake." His grief consists in being able to do so little for his wife. He has given her since his dinner-time her medicine, then a sip of brandy "to take the taste out of her mouth.... And then I said, 'Now here's a cake I bought for ye in the town; have a bit o' that.' So she nibbled a bit, and I says, 'Eat 'n up.' No, she didn't want no more. 'But you got to _'ave_ it,' I says. I a'most forced it down her throat. I do's the best I can for her; but I en't got nobody to tell me what to do." And he is galled by turns, by turns amused, at her behaviour towards himself. "I can't do nothink right for her. She's more stubborn to me than to anybody else: keeps on findin' fault. Last night, in the night, she roused up an' accused me o' goin' away. 'You bin away somewheres,' she says. 'Oh yes, you 'ave; I heared ye come creepin' back up the road.' And I'd bin sittin' there all the time." This and much more he told. I tried to get away (we were in the garden), for I was busy; but he followed me, to talk still, and wandered off into recollections of his experiences at Guildford Hospital. _7.30 p.m._ Bettesworth has called once more, coming from the town, to show me the doctor's certificate (gastritis, it says), and to let me know that to-morrow morning he will not be here at his usual time. He proposes going to the relieving officer to obtain his order for a conveyance to move the old woman. "I shall be over there by seven o'clock," he says. The cumbersomeness of all these formalities is sickening. Having got the order, he will probably need to go right back to the town to arrange about the conveyance. He was very tired, and rather wet, the night having set in with showers coming up on the east wind. So I got him a chair in the scullery, for the wet was making his old corduroys smell badly, and gave him a small glass of brandy-and-water. He refused a biscuit; "I couldn't swaller it," he said. "I can't eat, for thinkin' o' she." He is not without a kind of pitiful consolation. "Seven or eight," he says, have professed their willingness to receive him into their homes, if need should be. One, even now, on the road from the town, has said, "Don't you trouble about _yerself_, Freddy; you can have a home with me, if you should want one." But the idea associated with this, of parting from his wife, breaks him down. The doctor who granted the certificate--the right doctor, this time--was sympathetic. "He come out to me because he see I was touched, and says, 'You no call to be _oneasy_, old gentleman; she'll be looked _after_ up there. Everything 'll be done for her as can be done.'"