It began at once, with reference to a cottage--a sort of "week-end" cottage--we were passing, into which, Bettesworth said, new tenants were coming. "How they keep changing!" said I; and he, "Well enough they may, at the price." "What is it, then?" "Four pound a month. Furnished, o' course; but there en't much there. And," he added, "I can't see payin' a pound a week for a place to lay down in." Next--but what came next had better be omitted now. It related to the family affairs of a certain coal-carter, and so led up to discourse of other carter men who lived in the village. From them, the transition to the employer of two of them was easy. He "got the two best carters in the neighbourhood now," said Bettesworth; but as for horses, "he en't got a hoss fit to put in a cart, 'cause he en't never had anybody before as understood anything about 'em. Somebody ought to put the cruelty inspector on to him, to go to his place and see. He _did_ go, once; but he" (the horse-owner) "got wind of it and," as far as could be gathered from Bettesworth's talk, is suspected of having "squared" the inspector. But "there's a lot talkin' about the condition of the hosses down there," and, indeed, things "down there" seem to be generally mismanaged. The premises are "a reg'lar destructive old place": the carts, "he won't never have 'em only botched up, an' they be all to pieces;" and the harness is treated no better. "The saddles, they says, the flock 's all in lumps: _sure_ a hoss's back an' shoulders 'd get sore. That's where they do's all the work, poor things. When I had hosses to look after, as soon as I got 'em in I always looked to their back an' shoulders first. I'd get a sponge, or a cloth...." One of the two good carters above mentioned "can trace up a hoss's tail, you know, with straw. There en't one in ten knows how to do that. I've earnt many a shillin' at it." But Bettesworth had known one man who used to earn as much as thirty shillings in a day at this work, at horse-fairs. Him Bettesworth has occasionally helped, I understand; and also, "Old Bill Baldwin--I've sometimes bin down an' done it for him." Now, I had thought Bill Baldwin knew all that was worth knowing about horses and horse management; so I asked, surprisedly, "What, can't he do it?"