He chatted long, and rationally enough, in his customary vein, but saying nothing very striking or particularly characteristic. There were some pleasant remarks on one "Peachey" Phillips, a coal-cart man. Peachey "looks after his old mother at Lingfield," and is "a good chap to work" (a "chap" of fifty years old, I should judge), but has been hampered by want of education. According to Bettesworth, "he might have had some _good_ places if he'd had any schoolin'," and he had regretfully confessed it to Bettesworth. "Cert'nly he's better 'n he was. His little 'ns what goes to school--he've made they learn him a little; but still.... Well, you can't get on without it. Nobody ever ought to be against schoolin'.... Yes, a good many is, but nobody never ought to be against it. I don't hold with all this drillin' and soldierin'; but readin', and summin', and writin', and to know how to right yourself...." As Bettesworth lay in bed there upstairs, and unable to see much but his bedroom walls and their cheap pictures, for the window was rather high up and narrow, his mind was still out of doors. He inquired about several details in the garden; and particularly he wanted to know if a young hedge was yet clipped, in which he had taken much interest. It chanced that a man was working on it that afternoon; and Bettesworth's thought of it therefore struck me as somewhat remarkable. Evidently he was longing to see the garden; and though we did not know then that the desire would never be gratified, still that was the probability, and perhaps he realized it. He was a little tearful, as the time came for me to leave him. After this I tried to make a point of seeing him once a week. Friday afternoons were the times most convenient, and the following Sunday commonly afforded the leisure for recording the visits. I give the accounts of them pretty much as they stand in my book. _June 18, 1905 (Sunday Morning)._--I saw Bettesworth on Friday afternoon. His voice was husky, and feebler than I have before heard it; but then in every way he was weaker, and seemed to have given up hope; in fact, he said that he wished it was over, though not quite in those words. He complained of pain in his chest and about the diaphragm, and in his legs. I did not acknowledge to him that he seemed worse to me; but visitors of his own sort practise no such reticence. He told me that Mrs. Blackman, Mrs. Eggar and others had seen him, and they all said, "Oh dear, Fred, how bad you looks!" Carver Cook's observation was yet more pointed: "Every time I sees ye, you looks worse 'n you did the time afore." Bettesworth related all this almost as if talking of some third person.