It would take long, too, to tell of his morning in his own words, beginning with the early walk to Moorways for the relieving officer's order, and telling how old chums starting off to work were astonished to see him thus unwontedly on the road, and what they said as he passed them by as if with a renewal of vigour, and how one was "puffed, tryin' to keep up." The long waiting at the office door (the officer had been out in his garden getting up potatoes), and Bettesworth's meditations, "I wish he'd come," and the instructions furnished him as to how to go on--they were all narrated simply, because they happened; but the touch of grey morning mist which somehow pervaded the talk while I was hearing it could not be reproduced with its words. The old man was back here soon after eight o'clock, on his way to the town to order the fly which should take his wife to the infirmary. He had had no breakfast. I gave him tea and bread and butter; but he left the bread and butter--couldn't swallow it, he said. He had had a glass of beer at the Moorways Inn. He went into the town, and I met him on the road, returning. The fly proprietor had recognized him and behaved kindly. "Got a bit o' trouble then, old gentleman?" Yes, the fly should be there to the minute. At noon, to the minute, it arrived, the driver of it being a son of an old neighbour of Bettesworth's. Meanwhile, Bettesworth's niece, "Liz," and a neighbour's wife--a Mrs. Eggar--whom he spoke of as "Kate," were there trying to dress the old woman--and failing. They got her stockings on, but no boots; a petticoat or so, but no bodice with sleeves; and for that much they had to struggle, even calling on Bettesworth to come upstairs and help them. Then the fly came, "and all she kep' sayin' was, 'Leave me to die at home. I wants to die at home'" and she fought and would not be moved. To get her downstairs the help of two men besides the driver was enlisted, Kate's husband being one of them. By a kindly policy, Bettesworth himself was sent to hold the horse ("'cause he wanted to start off"), in order that the sight of her husband might not increase the poor old woman's reluctance; and so they carried her downstairs, "bodily," he said, meaning, I suppose, that she did not support herself at all.