Tom played about with some kittens who occupied the hearth, and with a goat who walked demurely in at the open door—­while their host and Benjy spread the table for dinner—­and was soon engaged in conflict with the cold meat, to which he did much honour.  The two old men’s talk was of old comrades and their deeds, mute inglorious Miltons of the Vale, and of the doings thirty years back, which didn’t interest him much, except when they spoke of the making of the canal; and then indeed he began to listen with all his ears, and learned, to his no small wonder, that his dear and wonderful canal had not been there always—­was not, in fact, so old as Benjy or Farmer Ives, which caused a strange commotion in his small brain.

After dinner Benjy called attention to a wart which Tom had on the knuckles of his hand, and which the family doctor had been trying his skill on without success, and begged the farmer to charm it away.  Farmer Ives looked at it, muttered something or another over it, and cut some notches in a short stick, which he handed to Benjy, giving him instructions for cutting it down on certain days, and cautioning Tom not to meddle with the wart for a fortnight.  And then they strolled out and sat on a bench in the sun with their pipes, and the pigs came up and grunted sociably and let Tom scratch them; and the farmer, seeing how he liked animals, stood up and held his arms in the air, and gave a call, which brought a flock of pigeons wheeling and dashing through the birch-trees.  They settled down in clusters on the farmer’s arms and shoulders, making love to him and scrambling over one another’s backs to get to his face; and then he threw them all off, and they fluttered about close by, and lighted on him again and again when he held up his arms.  All the creatures about the place were clean and fearless, quite unlike their relations elsewhere; and Tom begged to be taught how to make all the pigs and cows and poultry in our village tame, at which the farmer only gave one of his grim chuckles.

It wasn’t till they were just ready to go, and old Dobbin was harnessed, that Benjy broached the subject of his rheumatism again, detailing his symptoms one by one.  Poor old boy!  He hoped the farmer could charm it away as easily as he could Tom’s wart, and was ready with equal faith to put another notched stick into his other pocket, for the cure of his own ailments.  The physician shook his head, but nevertheless produced a bottle, and handed it to Benjy, with instructions for use.  “Not as ’t’ll do ’ee much good—­leastways I be afeard not,” shading his eyes with his hand, and looking up at them in the cart.  “There’s only one thing as I knows on as’ll cure old folks like you and I o’ th’ rheumatiz.”

“Wot be that then, farmer?” inquired Benjy.

“Churchyard mould,” said the old iron-gray man, with another chuckle.  And so they said their good-byes and went their ways home.  Tom’s wart was gone in a fortnight, but not so Benjy’s rheumatism, which laid him by the heels more and more.  And though Tom still spent many an hour with him, as he sat on a bench in the sunshine, or by the chimney corner when it was cold, he soon had to seek elsewhere for his regular companions.