!

Midway between the rectory and Tom Pepper's is the "Guildhall," an
ancient house, though probably far less ancient than its name. It is
parish property, and for years has served as an almshouse for ten or a
dozen old people. My father used to read the Bible to them, and there
was a black cat once which would jump on to his knees, so at last it was
shut up in a cupboard. The top of this cupboard, however, above the
door, was separated from the room only by a piece of pasted paper; and
through this paper the cat's head suddenly emerged. "Cat, you bitch!"
said old Mrs Wilding, and my father could read no more. Nay, his father
(then in his last illness) laughed too when he heard the story.

The average age of those old Guildhall people must have been much over
sixty, and some of them were nearly centenarians--Charity Herring, who
was always setting fire to her bed with a worn-out warming-pan, and James
Burrows, of whom my father made this jotting in one of his note-books:
"In the year 1853 I buried James Burrows of this parish at the reputed
age of one hundred years. Probably he was nearly, if not altogether that
age. Talking with him a few years before his death, I asked if his
father had lived to be an old man, and he said that he had. I asked him
then about his grandfather, and his answer was that he had lived to be a
'wonnerful owd man.' 'Do you remember your grandfather?' 'Right well: I
was a big bor when he died.' 'Did he use to tell you of things which he
remembered?' 'Yes, he was wery fond of talking about 'em: he used to say
he could remember the Dutch king coming over.' James Burrows could not
read or write, nor his father probably before him: so that this statement
must have been based on purely traditional grounds. Assume he was born
in 1755 he would have been a 'big bor,' fifteen years old, in 1770; and
assume that his grandfather died in 1770 aged ninety-six, this would make
him to have been born in 1675, fourteen or fifteen years before William
of Orange landed."

Then there were Tom and Susan Kemp. He came from somewhere in Norfolk,
the scene, I remember, of the 'Babes in the Wood,' and he wore the only
smock-frock in the parish, where the ruling fashion was
"thunder-and-lightning" sleeve-waistcoats. Susan's Sunday dress was a
clean lilac print gown, made very short, so as to show white stockings
and boots with cloth tops. Over the dress was pinned a little black
shawl, and her bonnet w