So the entry proceeds, noting how stiff and strong the grass was already looking after a threat of drought; how the hedgerows were odorous with the pungent scent of nettles; how the lustrous opaque white of horse-daisies starred certain grassy banks; and at last, how all my neighbours who have gardens were as well pleased as myself with the weather. And so the note comes round to Bettesworth. He too, with his head full of recollections of past summer rains, and of hopes of rich crops to result from this present one, was glorying in the gloom of the day. As the old wise toads crept out from hole and wall-cranny and waddled solemn and moist-skinned across the lawn about their affairs, so Bettesworth about his, not much regarding a wet coat. He had theories as to hilling potatoes, or rather as to not hilling them until the ground could be drawn round the haulm wet. And here was his chance. In the afternoon he took it, joyfully, and the earth turned up rich and dark under his beck.[2] The tool set him talking. For hilling potatoes he reckoned, a beck is much better than a hoe: "leaves such a nice crumb on the ground." He was resolved to have his "five-grained spud" or garden fork turned into a beck--the next time he went to the town, perhaps, "'cause it wouldn't take 'em long, jest to turn the neck, and then draw the rivets an' take the tree out an' put in a handle. 'T'd make a good tool then--so sharp! "This old beck I'm usin'," he went on happily, "I warrant he's a hunderd year old. He belonged to my wife's gran'father afore I had 'n; and _I_'ve had 'n this thirty year or more.... He's a reg'lar hand-made one--and a good tool still. That's who he belonged to--my old gal's gran'father. "He" (the grandfather) "had this place over here o' Warner's--'twas him as built that, you know." The property mentioned is a large cottage and garden, adjoining that from which Bettesworth and his wife had so lately been turned out. "And he was the one as fust planted Brook's Field. He had Nott's, down here, and Mavin's, and Brook's Field--and a _purty_ bit that was, too! He was the fust one as planted it. Dessay he had a hunderd acres. Used to keep a little team, and a waggon shed--up the lane here, an' come down this lane an' right in there...." But we need not follow Bettesworth into these topographical details. Returning, in a moment, to the prosperity of his wife's grandfather, he hinted at the basis of it. The man was a peasant-farmer, producing for his own needs first, and enjoying certain valuable rights of common. "He used to keep two or three cows," said Bettesworth. "Well, moost people used to keep a cow then, what _was_ anybody at all. Ye see, the commons was all open, and the boys what looked after the cows used to git so much for every one; so the more (cows) they could git the better their week's wages was for lookin' after 'em.