Bettesworth did not like the weather. I have told of those steps connecting his cottage with the road. They were slippery now, and the handrail to them was icy when he clutched it, coming down in the dark of the mornings. At the bottom of the steps, before the road is reached, there is a steep path, commonly known as "Granny Fry's." Boys were sliding there after breakfast, and they called out to Bettesworth, "Be you roughed, Master Bettesworth?" According to his tale, he spoke angrily: "''Tis _you_ ought to be roughed,' I says; 'you ought to be roughed over the bank. You be old enough to know better.' And so they be, too. They be biggish boys; and anybody goin' there might easy fall down and break their back--'specially after dark." When he came back from his dinner, he said, "Somebody 've bin an' qualified old Granny Fry's." How? "Oh, somebody 've chucked some dirt over where they boys had made it so slippery." He was obliged to admit, though, that in his own boyhood he had been as careless as any of these. And a few minutes later he was confessing to another boyish fault. In a cottage hard by, little Timothy Porter--a chubby little chap about five years old--was on very friendly terms with old Bettesworth. He had but lately started his schooling, and almost immediately was taken unwell and had to stay at home a week or two. I happened now to ask Bettesworth how little Tim was getting on. "Oh, he's gettin' all right: goin' to school again Monday. He've kicked up a rare shine, 'cause they wouldn't let 'n go. I likes 'n for that. I likes to hear of a boy eager for learnin'--not to see 'm make a shine and their mothers have to take 'em three parts o' the way. Not but what I wanted makin' when I was a nipper. Many's a time I've clucked up to a tree jest this side o' Cowley Bridge, and that old 'oman" (I don't know what old woman) "come out an' drive me. There wa'n't no school then nearer 'n Lyons's--where Smith the wheelwright lives now. He used to travel with tea, and I dessay half a dozen of us 'd come to his school from Cowley Bridge. We'd start off an' say we wouldn't go to school; but we _'ad_ to." The frost, had it continued, would very soon have been calamitous to the working people. As it was, I saw bricklayers--good men known to me, and neighbours, too--standing idle in the town, at the street corners. And Bettesworth said, "Some o' the shop-keepers down in the town begun to cry out about it. They missed the Poor Man. And I heared the landlord down 'ere at the Swan say he was several pounds out o' pocket by it." _December 2, 1904._--Fortunately it was not to last. The men got to work again; our gardening tasks could go forward. My notebook has this entry for the 2nd of December: "Laying turf this afternoon, in wonderful mild dry weather." XXIX