Bell was always ready with a smart reply to anyone inclined to rally him, or whom he thought inclined to do so; but his method was inoffensive, though from most men it would have appeared impertinent.  In the very earliest days of my occupation the weather was so dry for the time of year—­October and November—­that fallowing operations, generally only possible in summer, could be successfully carried on, a very unusual circumstance on such wet and heavy land.  Meeting the Vicar, a genial soul with a pleasant word for everyone, the latter remarked that it was “rare weather for the new farmers.”  Bell, highly sensitive, fancied he scented a quizzing reference to himself and to me, and knowing that the Vicar’s own land—­he was then farming the glebe with a somewhat unskilful bailiff—­was getting out of hand, replied:  “Yes, sir; and not so bad for some of the old uns.”  Bell happened to pass one day when I was talking to the Vicar at my gate.  “Hullo!  Bell,” said he, “hard at work as usual; nothing like hard work, is there?” “No, sir,” said Bell; “I suppose that’s why you chose the one-day-a-week job!”

Labourers have great contempt for the work of parsons, lawyers, and indoor workers generally; a farmer who spends much time indoors over correspondence and comes round his land late in the day is regarded as an “afternoon” or “armchair” farmer, and a tradesman who runs a small farm in addition to his other business is an “apron-string” farmer.  With some hours daily employed on letter-writing, accounts and labour records, which a farm and the employment of many hands entails, and with frequent calls from buyers and sellers, I was sometimes unable to visit men working on distant fields until twelve o’clock or after, and I was told that it had been said of me by some new hands, “why don’t ’e come out and do some on it?”

It was remarked of the late tenant, “I reckon there was a good parson spoiled when ’e was made a farmer.”  And of a lawyer, who combined legal practice with the hobby of a small farm, that there was no doubt that “Lawyer G——­s kept farmer G——­s.”

Bell’s favourite saying was, “If a job has to be done you may as well do it first as last,” and it was so strongly impressed upon me by his example that I think I have been under its influence, more or less, all my life.  He was certain to be to the fore in any emergency when promptitude, courage, and resource were called for; he it was who dashed into the pool below the mill and rescued a child, and when I asked if he had no sense of the danger simply said that he never thought about it.  It was Bell who tackled a savage bull which, by a mistaken order, was loose in the yard, and which, in the exuberance of unwonted liberty, had smashed up two cow-cribs, and was beginning the destruction of a pair of new barn doors, left open, and offering temptation for further activity.  The bull, secured under Bell’s leadership and manacled with a cart-rope, was induced