"And there was never a sign o' soldiers; 'twas all townspeople--civilians, that is; and the cheerin'--there! Skinner said he hollered till he was hoarse. He ast me" (Bettesworth) "how 'twas I didn't go over; but I said, 'Naw....' Not but what I _likes_ the old feller!"
Bettesworth made no answer but that expressive "No" of disinclination, but I can amplify it. He was not now a young man, to go tearing off enthusiastically for an eight-mile walk, which was sure to end in a good deal of drinking and excitement. His days for that were gone by for ever. Prudence warned him that he was best off pottering about in his regular way, here at home.
There was another reason, too, to restrain him. It brings us swiftly back for a moment from war incidents and the public excitement to the very interior of that hovel down by the "Lake," to learn that poor old Lucy Bettesworth was once more ill at this time. Her brother calling, and exhibiting an unwonted kindliness, had thrown her into sudden hysteria ending in epileptic fits. Even had Bettesworth felt inclined, he could not have left her. He told me the circumstances, and much, too, of her life history--the most of which has been already published, and may be omitted here. The illness, however, was not so severe as to engage all Bettesworth's thoughts. It allowed him to take interest in Buller's return, and on the same day to discourse of other outside matters too, in which all our valley was interested through these months.
Word had reached him somehow of the proposals just then announced for the higher training of our soldiers; and he foresaw increased difficulties in recruiting on these terms. There was too much work to be had, and it was too well paid, to make young men eager to join the army; and the service certainly did not need to be rendered less attractive than it was. Bettesworth, it seemed, had already been discussing this very point with his neighbours. As to the disturbance of the labour market consequent upon the war, he viewed it with no favour. The inflated prices of labour seemed to him unwholesome; they were having an injurious effect upon young men, giving them an exaggerated opinion of their true worth as labourers. And this was particularly true, since the building of the new camp at Bordon had begun. "Old Tom Rawson," he reported, had "never seen the likes of the young fellers that was callin' theirselves carpenters an' bricklayers now. Any young chap only got to take a trowel over to Woolmer (by Bordon), and he'd be put on as a bricklayer, at sixpence a hour. And you mawn't stop to show 'em nothing. If the clurk o' the works or the inspector come round, 't 'd be, 'What's that man doin', showin' the others?' Tom said he wa'n't _goin'_ to show 'em, neither. Why, at one time nobody ever thought of employin' a man, onless he could show his indentures. But now--'tis anybody." "The foreman" had lately come to Tom Rawson "askin' him jest to give an eye to some young chaps," and promising him another halfpenny an hour. And Bettesworth commented, "But dessay he (the foreman) was gettin' his bite out o' the youngsters."