work went with a
swing and with happy faces and good-humoured chaff.

I was always pleased to hear the pickers singing, for I knew then that
all was well. Sometimes, after a trying day, when Jarge had been
called upon to expostulate, or "to talk" more than usual, the corners
of his mouth would take a downward turn, and he complained, perhaps,
of gipsies or tramps whom I was obliged to employ when the crop was
heavy, though they were kept in a gang apart from the villagers; but
he always came up happy again next morning, the mouth corners tending
upwards, and his broad and beaming smile with a radiance like the
rising sun on a midsummer morning.

Jarge was a man of discrimination. When we were forced to inaugurate a
School Board on account of the growing difficulty, owing to the bad
times, of collecting voluntary subscriptions, all the old school
managers, including my second Vicar--I served under three Vicars as
church-warden--refused to join the Board. Jarge, who was much
exercised in his mind as to the possibility of future bad management,
came to me, and referring to a proposal to place working-men on the
Board, said: "We wants men like you, sir, for members; what's the good
of sending we dunderyeads there?"

Going round the farm on his daughter's wedding-day, I was surprised to
find him at work; and when I asked him why he was not at the ceremony,
"Well," he replied, "I don't think much of weddings--the fittel
(victuals) ain't good enough; give me a jolly good fu-ner-ral!"

Jarge wore a brown velveteen coat on high-days and holidays by virtue
of his sporting reputation, and looked exceedingly smart with special
corduroy breeches and gaiters and a wide-awake felt hat. He was much
annoyed in Birmingham, whither I had sent all the men to an
agricultural show, at hearing a man say to a companion, "There's
another of them Country Johnnies." When I told him what a swell he
looked, he replied somewhat ruefully, "No! that's what I never could
be," as though he felt that his appearance was disappointingly rustic.

Though a most industrious man, he had dreams of the enjoyment of
complete leisure; he told me that if ever he possessed as much as
fifty pounds he would never do another day's work as long as he lived.
I answered that when that ideal was reached he would postpone his
projected ease until he had made it a hundred, and so on ad infinitum;
and this proved a correct forecast, for in time, by the aid of a
well-man