SCHOOL DAYS
gray old man, with a bushy eyebrow and strong, aquiline nose, busied in one of his vocations. He was a horse and cow doctor, and was tending a sick beast which had been sent up to be cured. Benjy hailed him as an old friend, and he returned the greeting cordially enough, looking, however, hard for a moment both at Benjy and Tom, to see whether there was more in their visit than appeared at first sight. It was a work of some difficulty and danger for Benjy to reach the ground, which, however, he managed to do without mishap; and then he devoted himself to unharnessing Dobbin and turning him out for a graze ("a run" one could not say of that virtuous steed) on the common. This done, he extricated the cold provisions from the cart, and they entered the farmer's wicket; and he, shutting up the knife with which he was taking maggots out of the cow's back and sides, accompanied them toward the cottage. A big, old lurcher got up slowly from the door-stone, stretching first one hind-leg and then the other, and taking Tom's caresses and the presence of Toby, who kept, however, at a respectful distance, with equal indifference.
"Us be cum to pay 'e a visit. I've a-been long minded to do 't for old sake's sake, only I vinds I dwon't get about now as I'd use to 't. I be so plaguey bad wi' th' rheumatiz in my back." Benjy paused, in hopes of drawing the farmer at once on the subject of his ailment without further direct application.
"Ah, I see as you bean't quite so lissom as you was," replied the farmer, with a grim smile, as he lifted the latch of his door; "we bean't so young as we was, nother on us, wuss luck."
The farmer's cottage was very like those of the better class of peasantry in general. A snug chimney-corner with two seats, and a small carpet on the hearth, an old flint gun and a pair of spurs over the fireplace, a dresser with shelves on which some bright pewter plates and crockeryware were arranged, an old walnut table, a few chairs and settles, some framed samplers, and an old print or two, and a bookcase with some dozen volumes on the walls, a rack with flitches of bacon and other stores fastened to
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