I supposed he meant in Sussex; but it appeared not. "No," he said, "I dunno as they've begun in Sussex, but about here. Lent corn, oats, an' barley, an' so on. There's So-and-so"--he named three or four farmers reported to have begun cutting, and went on, "But 'tis all machine work, so there won't be much" (extra work). "But the straw en't no higher 'n your knees in some parts, so they says.... 'Twas the cold spring--an' then the dryth. But it don't much matter about the barley. I've heared old people say they've knowed barley sowed and up and harvested without a drop o' rain on it fust to last. Where you gets straw" (with other crops, I suppose, is the meaning) "there en't no fear about the barley: 'tis a thing as 'll stand dryth as well as purty near anything." He had "heard old people say"--things like these that he was now saying. And Bettesworth's phrase will bear thinking of, for its indication of the topics which the progress of the summer months had always been wont to renew in his brain year by year. Unhappily, about this period something less pleasing was beginning to force itself upon his attention. XXVI Into the peacefulness of Bettesworth's last working summer a disquieting circumstance had been slowly intruding; and now, with August, it developed into a subject of grave fears. I do not know when I first noticed a small sore on the old man's lower lip, but I think it must have been in May or early June. On being asked, he said it had been there since his illness in the spring, and "didn't seem to get no worse." Certainly he was not troubling about it. Weeks passed, perhaps six weeks, in which, though the ugly, angry look of the thing sometimes took my attention, I forbore to speak of it again, being unwilling to arouse alarm. Then it occurred to me that if I was too fanciful, Bettesworth was not fanciful enough. In his robust out-door life he had never learnt to be nervous and anticipate horrors; and he might not be sufficiently alive to the dreadful possibilities which were presenting themselves to my own imagination. I urged him accordingly to see his club doctor. He did so, not immediately, though after how long an interval I am unable to say, since none of this affair got into my note-book. The doctor no sooner saw the sore than he said it must be cut out. "Do you smoke?" was one of his first questions; and "Where is your pipe?" was the next. Bettesworth produced his pipe--an old blackened briar--and was comforted to learn that it was considered harmless. But he must have the sore removed, and his two or three remaining teeth near it would have to come out. When could he have it done? the doctor asked. Bettesworth said that he must consult me on that point, and came away promising to do so.