And once again his talk shows how far he was, that afternoon, from thinking of himself as an infirm person, or an object of pity. I am struck by the contrast between his later view of things and this which he professed, when still in good health. For, speaking appreciatively of Widow Morris as "the _cleanest_ old soul as ever lived," he went on to say that, though he did not know what she was doing at that time, she had been in the workhouse. It puzzled him how she lived, and others like her. And when I said, "She ought to be in the workhouse," he echoed the opinion emphatically. "_Better_ off there than what they be at home, sir." So with Mrs. Connor. "It's a mystery how she lives. And there's that son of hers, mungs about with a short pipe stuck in his mouth," and by sheer idleness had lost several jobs, at which he might have been earning eleven shillings a week. "And that poor gal, he's sister, got to starve herself to keep her mother and that lout. Cert'nly, she ought to keep her mother," but, for the lout, Bettesworth's politer vocabulary was insufficient. So we talked in the gathering winter dusk, able, both of us, in the assurance of the comfortable evening before us, to consider the workhouse as a refuge with which neither of us would ever make personal acquaintance. If I was unimaginative and therefore callous, so was Bettesworth. It was he who said, "I reckons that's what they places be for--old people past work, and little helpless childern." But as to the able-bodied, "That stoneyard's the place for they, _I_'d put it on to 'em, so's it 'd give 'em sore hearts, if it didn't sore hands." And then he told of a tramp--a carpenter--who had earned his tenpence an hour, and now was using workhouses to lodge in at night, while all day he was "munging about" (or "doing a mung"), cadging a few halfpence for beer. "And that 'ere bloke down near we, he's another of 'em. Earns eightpence-halfpenny, and his son sixpence. But they gets it all down 'em." They had not paid Mrs. Skinner for the pork obtained from her the previous week; indeed, they paid nobody. "Never got nothing, and yet there's only they two and the old woman." What a contrast were these wasters--that was the idea of Bettesworth's talk--with those two poor old widow women, whom he could afford to pity in his strength and comfort! _December 24._--The next note brings us to Christmas Eve. The weather on the preceding day had changed from rimy frost to tempestuous rain, which at nightfall began to be mingled with snow. By his own account Bettesworth went to bed soon after seven, although even his wife urged that it was too early, and that he would never lie till morning. He had heard the tempest, and the touch of the snow against his bedroom window, and so had his wife. It excited her. "Ben't ye goin' to look out at it?" she said. And he, "That won't do me no good, to look at it. We got a good fire in here."