He had a faint air of
being surprised - which, God knows, he might well be - that life had
gone so ill with him. The shape of his trousers was in itself a
jest, so strangely were they bagged and ravelled about his knees; and
his coat was all bedaubed with clay as tough he had lain in a rain-
dub during the New Year's festivity. I will own I was not sorry to
think he had had a merry New Year, and been young again for an
evening; but I was sorry to see the mark still there. One could not
expect such an old gentleman to be much of a dandy or a great student
of respectability in dress; but there might have been a wife at home,
who had brushed out similar stains after fifty New Years, now become
old, or a round-armed daughter, who would wish to have him neat, were
it only out of self-respect and for the ploughman sweetheart when he
looks round at night. Plainly, there was nothing of this in his
life, and years and loneliness hung heavily on his old arms. He was
seventy-six, he told me; and nobody would give a day's work to a man
that age: they would think he couldn't do it. 'And, 'deed,' he went
on, with a sad little chuckle, ''deed, I doubt if I could.
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