“Then,” said my father, “after having paid yourself, these fifty acres, which were a month ago worth a rental of only fifty shillings, will bring in ten or twelve pounds a year, and have five hundred pounds’ worth of larches upon them. Upon my word, this is a pretty profit!”
“Consider, too,” said Sir Henry, “that without costing me a farthing more, the thinnings of the plantation will add to my income at a continually increasing rate. I shall be able to employ more and more labourers every year:—not that I need tell you so; but I put in this observation for your daughter’s sake. She looks quite disappointed in me—disappointed to find that I look for any profit from the measures which will benefit my family and society at large. Have I guessed your thoughts rightly, Miss Lucy?”
So rightly, that I blushed and my father laughed, while he assured Sir Henry that we none of us doubted his disinterestedness.
“What different ways there are of benefiting one’s country and posterity, in different parts of the world!” I exclaimed. “In Canada, a landed proprietor would clear away as many trees as possible, I suppose, if he wished to do a patriotic thing.”
“It is one of the most interesting employments I know of,” said my father, “to trace how the same principles lead men to directly opposite or widely different modes of conduct, according to circumstances; and if men studied this fact a little more carefully than they do, the world would be incalculably happier than it seems likely to be for some time to come. If statesmen and legislators saw that usages and laws must be varied with lapse of time and change of circumstances, we should be freed from many useless institutions. If our men of power saw that what is beneficial to a country in one age may be hurtful in another, we should have a better economy and a wiser distribution of our wealth. If our people discerned the same thing, they would leave off complaining of new measures because they are not old, and railing against their best friends because the advice they offer would not have suited the condition of our grandfathers.”
Sir Henry observed that he had heard far more said about what would have been thought of Mr. Malton’s large farm a century ago, than what ought to be thought of it now. In the same manner, the wise men who study how the resources of the nation may be best managed and improved are called hard-hearted, because the measures they recommend are different from such as were necessary when our population was less numerous, when there was less competition in commerce, and a smaller demand for agricultural produce.
“There can be no surer mark of ignorance and prejudice,” observed my father. “The king of Persia is prejudiced when he laughs at a king of England for having only one wife; and every Englishman who thinks the king of Persia wicked for having twenty, is ignorant. He does not know that the religion of the monarch allows the custom. Any one of our labourers would be prejudiced if he blamed an Indian for waste for burning a whole pine-tree at once; and that Indian would show himself ignorant if he laughed at Sir Henry for spending so much time, and labour, and money, in planting trees, of which the Indians have more than they know what to do with.”
“Any one such instance,” observed Sir Henry, “is enough to silence for ever all objections to plans because they are new. I would desire no better instance of the variations introduced by time into the way of employing labour and capital than the one you have reminded me of, by your mention of Indian forests. There was a time when this island was as much overgrown with wood as any part of North America now is.”
“What a different place it must have been then!” said I.
“Different indeed! Vast forests extending over whole districts; the climate as cold as now in the north of Russia; (for countries in our latitude become temperate only in proportion as they are cleared;) wolves abounding in every wilderness, and swamps spreading in all directions, to the great injury of the health of the savage inhabitants,—such was Great Britain once.”
“Have swamps any necessary connexion with woods?” I inquired.
“With untended forests, where no care is taken to prevent them. A tree is blown down across a rivulet, and forms a dam. The water, stopped in its course, diffuses itself over the neighbouring ground, and loosens the roots of other trees, and, by becoming stagnant, poisons their vegetation. These other trees fall, one by one, and form other dams; and thus the destruction proceeds, till what was once a forest becomes a bog.”
“This is the reason, then, why trees are found buried in swamps?”
“Certainly; and we know it not only from the fact of trees being so found, but from there being actual instances of such transformations of a forest into a swamp at the present time, in Invernesshire, and some other parts of Scotland. Now, what would a wise landed proprietor do in such a state of the country as this?”
“The very reverse of what you are now doing,” said my father. “He would clear as much ground as possible for cultivation, putting the wood out of the way as fast as it was cut. He would build with it, burn it, and encourage every body about him to use it for all the purposes of life to which it could be applied. He would encourage pasturage, because cattle are scarce in proportion to the scarcity of open ground. These cattle, continually increasing under the care of man, would wander into the woods, and, though they could not injure large timber trees, would prevent the young plants from coming up, and thus prepare for the decline of the forests.”
“If things proceeded in their natural course, the face of the country would be wholly changed in a few centuries,—the hills being bleak and barren, and the vales swampy; the latter having become unfit for the residence of man, and the former an unsheltered and perilous pasture for his flocks. What would a wise landed proprietor do now?”
“He would hang woods on the summits of the hills to protect the herds grazing on their slopes,” replied my father. “He would cut trenches in the valley, and, as an effectual drain, would plant the hollows the first moment that their soil would bear the process. Under this management, the high grounds would become fertile, and the bogs would be converted into firm, rich, vegetable soil, ready to repay the labours of the plough.”
“Then if you owned the downs of our southern counties,” said I, “or the bogs of Ireland, you would plant and drain and plant again?”
“I should, and as much for my own profit as for the general good; for the price of timber rises, of course, in proportion to its scarcity. Now you see how different is the application of labour and capital in these two states of a country. In the one, labour is applied to banish, in the other to create, woods. In the one, cattle are permitted to destroy the young timber; while in the other every tender shoot is protected at an expense of trouble and money. In the one, growing wood is as little valuable a part of the proprietor’s capital as the stones which encumber Mr. Malton’s new fields, and of which he can only make the meanest of his fences; while in the other, it is the resource on which the proprietor mainly relies for the stability of his fortune, not only for the income it brings, but for its power of increasing the productiveness of his pasture and corn lands.”
“And do you believe,” said I, “that there are any so stupid as to oppose a different application of labour and capital in these two cases?”
“Not in so clear an instance,” replied my father; “but they will not follow the precedent in cases very like it. Can you fancy a family of natives, living, some centuries ago, in a wattled hut in a wilderness of Cumberland, visited every winter’s night by wolves, every spring season with agues, crying out in dismay at the proceedings of a rich neighbour to clear the ground? They would exclaim against having their old customs broken in upon, and would talk of the pleasure of gathering acorns for supper in the glades at sunset, and of their hunts, and of the freedom of their wild life. If their neighbour represented to them that acorns had long been becoming scarce from the disappearance of oaks in the swamps; that their children had been swept from their side by diseases belonging to the locality; and that wild beasts were increasing so fast, that there seemed a probability of the hunters soon becoming the hunted, these new notions would only increase their discontent. If he offered to supply them with certain quantities of grain and meat in exchange for wolves’ heads, they would complain of the degradation of obtaining their food by rendering service instead of the dignified independence of picking up acorns or digging roots out of the soil. They would complain that he had injured them by fencing in ground where the boar used to stand at bay; and if he attempted to shew them the impossibility of restoring the forest and the climate and mode of life to what they were a hundred years before, and the necessity of making some provision for their altered state, they would, instead of listening, tax him with all the distresses and inconveniences which had been prepared before he was born.—Now, Lucy, can you find a parallel case to this?”
“Very easily,” replied I, “Mr. Malton is the rich neighbour, and old Williams was one of the lovers of the old paths; and if you had told us of one who retired back farther into the swamp and built his hut on the sinking trunks of the fallen trees, I should have thought you were prophesying of Norton.”
“Let us bode him no ill,” said my father, “but rather hope that he will plant his foot on firm ground, whatever we may think of the position he has chosen.”
“I can scarcely imagine,” said I, “that any would be found to object to the second process Sir Henry described. The shepherd, striving in vain to win his way against the snow storm on the uplands, in search of his perishing flock, would surely bless the hand that planted woods to shelter his charge?”
“Even he,” said my father, “would pluck up every sapling if he dared, for shepherds are well known to grudge every foot of soil on which their flock cannot browze.”
“Observe the fact,” said Sir Henry. “Are not my pheasants lampooned before they are hatched? Is not every larch in all these acres looked upon as a meal taken from a half-starved cow? When the shepherd finds his flock safe under the shelter of a full-grown wood, he will be reconciled to the planter; and not till then: and if any one of my neighbours should live to rest his aged form on his staff in the noonday sun, and watch his grandchildren, among a hundred labourers, felling wood on this spot, he may look on my grave as he creeps homewards, and sigh to think how he once misunderstood my intentions; but I must not expect this justice in my lifetime.”
“You may,” replied my father; “and if you are spared to a good old age, you will witness as total a change in the views of our discontented neighbours as in the aspect of this waste or the condition of our village.”
Sir Henry pointed to the temporary dwellings which had been erected for the troop of labourers who had come from a distance to work under his forester, (there not being an adequate supply of labour at Brooke for the new demand,) and said,— “When that row of sheds shall have grown into a village, and when the axe and mattock shall be heard in the woods throughout the winter’s day; when the timber-wain shall come jingling down the slope, and the sawyers and woodmen be seen going and returning early and late, my purposes will be answered, whether I live to see their fulfilment or not.”
CHAPTER VI.
SERGEANT RAYNE’S STORY.
I often passed an hour with the sergeant in his neat lodging; and if I went only to inquire after his health, or to ask some question which might be answered immediately, I frequently stood chatting till my brothers came to see what I was about. They, however, were generally my companions, for they loved, like other people, to hear the entertaining stories of battles, sieges, and shipwrecks, and the sadder accounts of the suffering and death attendant upon war, which our friend could relate. As he was as regular in his habits as when subject to regimental discipline, we always knew when we should find him at home. At a certain hour he rose and breakfasted; at a certain hour he took down his hat, hung it on a block and brushed it, and put it on sideways with a soldier-like air, and the people at the Arms knew what o’clock it was by the sergeant’s taking his seat under the elm or beside the fire, according as the weather might be. Moving with the sun to the churchyard bench, as regularly as the shade on the dial, he would have been supposed ill or dead if a labourer returning through the stile to his dinner had missed him on a fine day. His landlady whispered to us that he was rather a particular old gentleman, though the most good-natured in the world when not put out of his way; and, indeed, if anything ever did make him look sour, it was his dinner not being ready to a moment.
He did not care what was provided for him: he preferred a crust of bread at one o’clock to a goose at two. He could not have told anybody an hour after dinner what he had been eating; but if kept waiting five minutes, he could not recover it till the next morning. His hostess had half a dozen little children, and he was as kind to them as if he had been their grandfather, but warned them of his awful displeasure if they entered his room during his absence. If they came by invitation, well and good; he would do anything to amuse them. He would sing, tell stories, show them pictures, and even play at blind man’s buff; though, as he said, it was not fair play with him as he had only one hand to catch the rogues with. Not a rough word was ever heard from him. I remember one of the little ones saying, “Show me how you will be angry if I meddle with your sword. Will you frown like Bonaparte in the picture?” “No,” said another “he will stamp and speak loud, as he told us his captain did when he was in a passion.” The sergeant snatched up his cane, and made his countenance so fierce in a moment, that the children did not know what to think of him. They stared at him in terror till he could not help laughing; and then, I dare say, resolved in their hearts never to set foot in his parlour without leave.
On the present occasion he exclaimed, as I entered the room with Frederick and Arthur, “I can guess, Miss Lucy, what you and the young gentlemen are come for, and I am happy to see you. You want to hear the little story I promised you; and you shall be welcome to it.”
“I hope you are not busy?”
“Not at all. You are come just in right time. See, I had finished this chapter of my book, and I was putting the paper in when I heard your step in the passage.”
“I want to know,” said Frederick, who was remarkable for always going straight to the point, “I want to know where you were taken prisoner, and how you got home again, and how long it was ago. Lucy says you are going to tell her all about it, and that we may hear it too.”
“To be sure you may, my dear boys; so sit down in the window-seat, and I will tell you. It was in Spain that I served at that time, you know, against the French. The armies had been drawing nearer to one another for a long while, and we all knew that there must be a terrible battle when they met. From the state of the roads, however, the whole army could not travel together, and when the van of both forces came in sight of each other, the rest were some miles in the rear. Both sides seemed much inclined for a skirmish, and there was pretty sharp fighting for the whole day before the grand battle. Often as I had been in action, I had never been wounded; but on this particular day, I felt a sort of certainty that I should be.”
“Had you never felt this before any other battle?”
“I think not so clearly; but it may only be that what happened made me take particular notice, and remember very well what my feelings had been. I mentioned this foreboding to a friend, however, and so I suppose I was somewhat struck by it.”
“And did he laugh at it, or call you a coward?”
“Neither the one nor the other, master. Very young soldiers, or men of hardened minds, may make light of the disasters of war, and call it cowardice to reflect upon them and prepare one’s mind for them; but my friend was neither giddy nor reckless, and he knew me too well to fancy me a coward. We had fought side by side in many a battle, and I have nursed him when badly wounded; so that we were real friends, and not companions of the camp only. He advised me to ease my mind of all worldly concerns, and to prepare myself in other ways for whatever might happen, as he always did before a battle; so I told him where to find what little money I had, and some letters I had written to my mother and another person——” “Who was that other person?” interrupted Frederick.
“Never mind who it was,” said I. “You should not ask such a question as that.”
“I have no objection, Miss Lucy, to tell you all. That other person was one to whom I had hoped to be married some time or other; but she was not bound to me, for I told her there was little prospect of my returning home; and if I did, I was afraid I should be very poor; and were getting on in life, and I could not bear the idea of preventing her being happy; so I begged she would not remain single for my sake. I had said this to her a long time before; and my letter on this occasion was to tell her that I still loved her as much as ever; and it was only to be sent in case of my death.—Well: we were very actively engaged all day without my taking any harm, while hundreds were falling round me. Late in the evening, when both parties were tired, and the fire slackened, I passed my friend as we were hastening forward for one other charge, and he called out ‘So you are safe, after all!’ ‘Safe after all,’ I replied, and left him behind. A minute after, a shot struck my right arm while the enemy was pressing round us. I could not defend myself; I was separated from my company, and, of course, taken prisoner.”
“In pain and alone, among foreigners and enemies!” I exclaimed. “How very miserable you must have been!”
“Not so much then as afterwards, Miss Lucy. You, who live in peace and quietness at home, can have no idea of the excitement of spirits there is in battle. One’s heart is so full of courage, one’s mind burns so with indignation at being made prisoner, and one has so much to think about, that there is no time to be truly miserable. I felt no pain from my wound at that time. I did not even know that I was wounded, till I found I could not raise my arm.”
“Is that possible?”
“Very true, my dear, I assure you. I was hurried away, I scarcely know how, to one of the baggage-waggons, with many of the wounded besides: but they were all French; not one friendly face did I see. We were laid, one close upon another, on straw, and jolted away, over bad roads to a town where an hospital was established. Some of my companions were in dreadful pain, and their groans made me sick at heart. I now began to suffer much; but I wished above all things not to be spoken to; so I remained as quiet as if I were dead, and closed my eyes. If I could have shut my ears also, I should have escaped many a horrible dream which has startled me since. Many a night, even now, I hear those groans and oaths; and the tortured countenances I used to see often in a battle rise up before me.—Before daybreak we reached the hospital; and I was really glad of it, though I knew well enough what was before me.”
“Did you feel sure that you must lose your arm?”
“Yes, master; I felt and saw that it was past cure.”
“And were you much afraid about it?”
“I had thought so much and so often about the chances of such an accident, that I was not taken by surprise; and I was already in so much pain that I was very willing to suffer more for the sake of being rid of it. I sat beside a fire, while one after another of my companions was taken to the surgeons. At last, after waiting an hour and a half, they were going to carry away the man who lay next beside me; but he was a coward, it seemed, and begged to be left. They had no time to waste, and so laid hold of me, and were going to carry me; but I soon showed them that I had the use of my legs at least, and walked as stoutly as any of them to where the surgeons were. They made quick work of it, and scarcely made a show of asking my leave.”
“But I suppose you would have given them leave?”
“I took care to do that. I held out my arm as soon as ever I saw the instruments.”
“And how did you—how could you bear it?”
“A sturdy spirit will carry one through a great deal, master. I am not sure that I should have borne it so well in England; but I was determined no enemy should wring a complaint out of me. So I was as still as a mouse the whole time; grasping the back of a chair with my other hand so hard that the blood came out at my finger nails. One of the surgeons observed this; and I heard him say that I was a sturdy fellow and fit for a soldier.”
“Then the pain was very, very great?”
“Much greater than anybody can fancy who has not felt it, or indeed than anybody can fancy at all; for it is not the sort of thing that can be remembered; and I dare say I have little better notion of it at this moment than you have. But such as it was, it was soon over, and then I walked away to bed. There I paid dear for the effort I had made; and I deserved it, for my bravery was not of the right kind and could not last long.”
“When I was left alone, weak from pain, and still thrilling in every nerve, a tide of most bitter feelings rushed in upon me. Such a tumult of thoughts I never knew before or since. I hid my face under the bed-clothes, that nobody might disturb me; and there for an hour or two I suffered such agony of mind as I can give you no idea of. My pride gave way, and I felt myself as weak as an infant. In vain I told myself that this misfortune was only what I had expected,—only what every soldier is liable to. In vain I called to mind the boasting in which I had indulged before I left home, and the wish which in my youth I had felt for the glory of one honourable wound. This recollection awakened others which subdued me completely.”
“What were they?”
“It happened that the day before I left this place to join the army, the old clergyman, who lived here then, invited me to the parsonage to say farewell. After talking cheerfully to me about my profession, he went out with me as far as the gate: and there he put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Remember, yours is a dangerous profession in more ways than one. You are not only liable to be sent early to another world, but to depart with false notions of glory in your head, and with pride and hatred in your heart.’ He pointed to the graves and went on, ‘See here what becomes of pride and enmity. There have been some of these whose hearts beat as high with various passions as yours will in your first battle. Now, all are humbled and all are still. So it will be a hundred years hence, with the youngest and the fiercest, with or against whom you are going to fight. They too will be humbled and stilled.’—The recollection of this circumstance now came back upon me clearly. I saw the church with the evening sunshine upon its windows. I saw the light flickering upon the smooth stems of the limes. I saw the graves, and also the venerable countenance and gray hair of my kind friend. I heard his voice and the voices of the children at their play. I could almost smell the flowers in his garden, and feel the pressure of his hand upon my shoulder. I lay weeping for many hours, till by thoughts of home, of my mother, and of other dear friends, my mind was prepared for still better thoughts. My Bible was in my pocket, (for I took care to have it always about me,) and there I found a better sort of courage than that of which I had been so proud.—I was soon glad to take some notice of my companions in the hospital; and we managed to be very cheerful and to converse a good deal, as I told you, Miss Lucy.”
“Did the friend you mentioned before know what had become of you? And what did he do with your money and your letters!”
“As he could learn nothing about me, he supposed that I was a prisoner; and he sent all that I had left behind me to my mother. It was not very long before she heard of me, but she had delivered the other letter I spoke of. I was sorry afterwards that I had ever written it.”
Nobody ventured to ask why; but the sergeant has told me since that the young woman had supposed that, as he was so long absent, he would never return and had therefore married. She received his letter soon after she was settled, and was made very unhappy by it for a little time; but I am pretty sure (though the sergeant did not say any such thing) that she had not a very warm heart; or, at any rate, that it had never been very warm towards him. He came back, he told us, a year or more before his mother’s death, which was a great comfort to them both.
“I think,” said Arthur, “that you must find the world grown very dull now, that there is no war anywhere in Europe. I wonder you are still so fond of the newspapers.”
“Dull, Master Arthur! I wish such a kind of dulness may last for ever.
It is all very well for people who want amusement to run about the village with news of a victory, and to help to make a bonfire and light up the houses. But if they happen to have a son or a brother killed or maimed for life, they may learn by experience what it is that thousands and millions are suffering. If they could take but one look at a field of battle, or an army in full retreat, they would wish for no more victories and illuminations. I hope I have as much of the spirit of a soldier in me as any man: and perhaps all the more for having suffered something for my country; but I do say that nations are only half civilized as long as wars are thought necessary. I say, moreover, that they who are foremost in war are farthest from heaven; for heaven is a land of peace.”
CHAPTER VII.
GREAT CHANGES AT BROOKE.
Brooke looked like a different place at the end of a very few years. In our own house, nothing remarkable had happened, unless it was the growth of my brothers, which was pronounced wonderful every time they appeared from school at Christmas; or that Billy Gray (now called William) had become quite an accomplished little footman. The improvement of his family had advanced as rapidly as his own; and one of the pleasantest changes visible in the place was that which every body observed in the outward condition of George Gray, his wife, and children.
George was a pattern of industry. Before and after his hours of daily labour he was seen digging, hoeing, planting, and pruning in his garden, his boys and sometimes his wife helping him; his eldest girl tending the cow; and the others mending or knitting stockings, or cleaning the house. Even the very little ones earned many a shilling by cutting a particular sort of grass in the lanes for seed for Mr. Malton’s pasture land. Each with a pair of scissors, they cut the tops off about six inches long, and filled their sack in a few hours. Mr. Malton’s steward paid them threepence a bushel for it, measured as hay. Their work was made easier by this grass being sown in lines along the hedges; and it was well worth the little trouble this cost to secure a constant supply of the seed, which was greatly in request; the sheep being very fond of this pasture.
Gray’s boys had all shoes and stockings now, and the girls were tidily dressed. The rent was regularly paid, and their fare was improved. How happened this?—from having ground, and keeping a cow?—Not entirely, though in some measure. The wages of labour had risen considerably at Brooke since the common was inclosed, as there was more work to be done, and the number of hands had not increased in proportion, though the population was already one-third larger than five years before. Gray felt the advantage of this rise of wages, and of having his family employed. He now wondered at his neighbours for letting their children be wholly idle as much as we once wondered at him. When he saw Hal Williams’s little boys engaged in mischief, he observed to his wife that one might earn a trifle in weeding, and another in gathering sticks and furze for fuel, and sweeping up the dung and dead leaves from the woods and lanes for manure. But neither Hal nor his boys liked to work when they could help it, though Hal’s wife set them a better example than her neighbours once expected of her. Many a mother shows an energy which never appeared while she was a giddy maiden. So it was with Ann: but it was a pity that she was ignorant of the ways of turning her industry to the best account, so that her desire for the comfort of her husband and children did not do them so much good as she intended.
Hal once observed to Gray that he wondered he could spend so much time and toil on his bit of ground, such a trifle as it was.
“It is no trifle to me,” said Gray. “The time I spend upon it is not great; and as for the toil,—a man with eight children must never grudge labour.”
“Why now, Gray, how much time do you spend on your plot? I see you at work when I get out of bed every morning; and when I come back from the Arms in the twilight, I hear your everlasting spade behind the hedge.”
“That is because I have no hours I can call my own but those before and after work. A couple of hours a day is the most I can spare; and surely it is worth that to be able to keep my cow.”
“What is her value to you, do you suppose?”
“One time with another, she yields five quarts a day, and that is worth two days’ wages a week, or perhaps three.”
“Five quarts a day! That never can be. Mine never gave three all the time I had her.”
“Nor mine while she fed on the common: but you know the keep is everything with a cow; and it is no more likely that a cow in the lanes should yield like mine, than that mine should yield thirteen pounds and a half of butter weekly, four months after calving, like a fine North Devon cow of Mr. Malton’s that I was admiring the other day. But I call my cow pretty well kept now, and she is worth the keeping. I manage to get many a good dish of vegetables for ourselves, too, out of my garden.”
“But no fruit, I see, neighbour. I like to see fruit-trees in a garden.”
“So do I, where there is ground and money and time enough; but it would not suit me. My cabbages would not thrive if the ground was shaded; and I could not raise fruit enough, or of a sufficiently good quality, to sell to advantage.”
“But it would be a great treat to the children.”
“My children must wait for such a treat till we grow richer. I am thankful enough to be able to give them bread and sometimes a bit of meat, instead of the potatoes we used to live on. Apples and gooseberries will come all in good time. Bread and clothes must be thought of first.”
“And yet you managed to get a pig.”
“Yes. I knew, if I contrived to buy one, I could easily keep it. So we made an effort to save in the winter, and in March I got a fine pig of four months. He was able to graze and eat cabbages and turnip-tops, and we have plenty of wash for him; so I hope, as he has thriven so far very well, he will be in fine condition for killing at Christmas.”
“Will you be able to fatten him liberally?”
“I hope so. He shall have as much barley-meal as he can eat, if I can afford it; if not, pease must do.”
“You will have a houseful of meat at that time. Bacon in plenty, griskins, chines, cheeks, and I don’t know what besides; and hog’s-puddings and lard for the children! Why, you will live like an alderman’s family for weeks. It is a fine thing to keep a pig!”
“It is a great advantage; and considering that, I wonder you don’t try, neighbour.”
“When I have eight children perhaps I may; but we get on somehow as it is; and I have quite enough to do, for I don’t pretend to work as hard as you.”
“No,” thought Gray, “You make your wife do it instead, while you go and smoke at the Arms.”
Hal’s cow had been sold long ago to pay his debts. It had been done during one of his wife’s confinements, and it was bad news for her, when she got about again, that it was actually sold and gone. It was some comfort that they owed no money; but it was a comfort which could not last long; for she knew that milk is a dear article to buy, while it is absolutely necessary where there are young children.—It was grievous to see in a short time how poorly they lived. One thing after another was given up. They had long contrived to do without meat; but now they could not afford beer, except a little on Sundays. Hal did not relish milk as when it came from his own cow, but took a fancy to have tea,—the least nourishing and most expensive diet a man can have. To indulge this fancy, the fire was kept in all day, the whole year round. There was an everlasting boiling, of the kettle in the morning, the potatoes for dinner, and the kettle again in the afternoon. Upon this miserable diet they grew thin and sickly; they ran in debt to the grocer till he refused their custom; and to Johnson’s wife for milk, till she declared she could not let them have any more. We were passing Hal’s door one day, when one of the children entered with an empty pitcher, on seeing which his mother burst into tears. There was but too much cause for her grief. Her hungry children must be content with a drink of water with their crust of bread, for Mrs. Johnson could afford no longer credit. My mother could not bear to see the cravings of the little ones; and she promised to go back with the messenger to Mrs. Johnson and persuade her not to disappoint them for this one day, and to see what could be done for the future: but she declared that the tea must be left off if the milk was to be continued. The poor woman said that she was willing to live in the cheapest way, if the children could but be fed; but that her husband made such a point of his tea that she had little hope of persuading him to give it up.
We took the child back to Johnson’s; and there we saw a cheerful sight.
Mrs. Johnson was milking one of her fine cows, while the other two stood by; and her daughter was measuring out the milk to the various messengers from the village. There were Miss Black’s maid, and Wickstead’s boy, and Gregson’s apprentice, and Harper’s servant, and half a dozen children from the neighbouring cottages, having their pitchers filled with the warm, fresh, rich milk. My mother smiled as she observed to me that the division of labour was not fully understood by our people yet, or they would have devised a better plan than having the