"One o' the right sort for me. 'Tis to be hoped nothin' 'll ever
happen to _she_!"
Such were the makeshift, yet not altogether unhappy domestic,
conditions by which Bettesworth was enabled for a little while to
maintain his independence, and carry on the obstinate and now hopeless
struggle to earn a living for himself. He was a man with work to do,
and with the will to do it, as yet. On this same eleventh of January
we may picture him forming one of a curious group of the working men
of the parish, who gathered in a rainy dawn on a high piece of the
road, and looked apprehensively at the weather. "I thought,"
Bettesworth told me afterwards, "we was in for a reg'lar wild day; and
so did a good many more. The men didn't like startin'.... I come out
to the cross-roads 'long of old Kid, and he said he didn't hardly know
what to think about it. And while we stood there, Ben Fowler come
along. 'I don't hardly know what to make of it,' he says. And then
some more come. There was a reg'lar gang of 'em; didn't like to go
away. Well, a man don't _like_ to set off for a day's work an' get wet
through afore he begins."
_January 17._--Not many more days of work, however, were to be added
to the tale of Bettesworth's laborious years. On the 17th of January
it appears that he was still going on, for old Nanny seen at an
unaccustomed hour on the road, spoke of him as getting about with
difficulty. This is what she said, in her gruff, quick, scolding
voice: "I couldn't git to the town fust thing, 'twas so slippery.
Bettesworth said he couldn't git down our steps this mornin', so I bin
chuckin' sand over 'em. Don't want ol' Freddy to break his leg.... All
up there by Granny Fry's the childern gets slidin,' an' makes it ten
times wuss than what 'twas afore, an' the more you says to 'm the wuss
they be."
With this last glimpse of him fumbling painfully on the slippery
pathway, we finish our acquaintance with Bettesworth's working life.