The farmer afforded me a glance of some suspicion. Narrow trade-interests had got the better of him. "You be gone into the retail line," he said. "To think of the Cranleighs coming down to that. But you don't sell milk by the quart now, do 'e?" Though I did not see how it could bear upon the subject, I assured him that most of our milk went to London, under contract with a great man, whose name I mentioned; and the rest we kept for making butter. "Well, then, I does a good little stroke of business there. Though not much profit out of that, of course. They takes in a gallon-can every morning. And they asked the boy whether I didn't keep no goats." "Goats! Why then they must be foreigners," I said. "No English people care about goat's milk. At least, unless their doctor orders it." "They ha'n't got no doctor, and don't want none. A rare strong lot according to all I hear. Toorks I call them, and I put it on the bill, 'Toork Esquire, debtor to John Ticknor.' Having raised no objection, why it stands they must be Toorks." "But people can't live on milk alone, Mr. Ticknor. And they must have some other name besides Turks. Even if they are Turks, which I scarcely can believe." "Well, you knows more about them than I do, sir. I never form an opinion, so long as they pays me good English money. But they never has no butcher's meat, nor no beer; and that proves that they bain't English folk. If you want to know more about them, Mr. Cranleigh, the one as can teach you is my dog _Grab_. _Grab_ feeleth great curiosity about them, because of the big dogs inside the old wall. He hath drashed every other dog in the parish; and it goeth very hard with him to have no chance to drash they. Never mind, old boy, your time will come." An atrocious bull-dog of the fiercest fighting type, who had followed us from the farmhouse, was nuzzling into his master's grey whiskers. Now I love nearly all dogs, and, as a rule, they are very good to me; but that surly fellow, who is supposed to be the type of our national character, does not appear to me, by any means, adorable. Very faithful he may be, and consistent, and straightforward, and devoted to his duty. But why should he hold it a part of his duty to kill every gentle and accomplished dog he meets, unless the other dips his tail, the canine ensign, to him? And of all the bull-dogs I have ever seen, this _Grab_ was the least urbane and polished. A white beast with three grisly patches destroying all candour of even blood-thirstiness, red eyes leering with treacherous ill-will, hideous nostrils, like ulcers cut off, and enormous jowls sagging from the stark white fangs. He saw that I disliked him, and a hearty desire to feel his tusks meet in my throat was displayed in the lift of his lips, and the gleam of his eyes.