‘Come,’ returned Elias plaintively, ‘that’s none of my fault. My missuses don’t last—that’s where ’t is. I did think the last ’un ’ud ha’ done my time, but she goes an’ drops off just at our busiest season. If I be so much o’ a marryin’ man, ’t is because the Lord in His mystreerious ways has seen fit to deal hardly wi’ I. Ye know as well as me, don’t ye, Isaac, as a dairy-farmer can’t get on nohow wi’out a wife.’ ‘Aye, ’t is what I’ve always said,’ agreed Isaac. ‘There may be profit in the dairy-farming, but there’s a deal o’ risk. What wi’ cows dyin’, and bein’ forced to toll a woman about, ’t is more bother nor it’s worth. Why did n’t ye do same as me, and keep sheep and grow roots? Ah, what with roots, and what with corn, a man can get on as well that way as your way—and there’s less risk.’ ‘Well, I’ve a-been brought up to it, d’ye see, Isaac—that’s it. My father was a dairyman before me—in a less way, to be sure. Ah, it were a struggle for him, I tell ye. He did ha’ to pay thirteen pound for every cow he rented of old Meatyard, what was master then. Thirteen pound! Think of that. Why, I used to hear him say as pounds and pounds went through his hands before he could count as he’d made a penny.’ ‘Ah!’ remarked Mr. Sharpe, with the placid interest of one who hears an oft-told tale. But then pastures and house-rent and all were counted in that—your father paid no rent for ’em, did he? And Meatyard found him in cows, and kept him in hay and oil-cake and that?’ ‘Yes,’ agreed Elias unwillingly; for the enumeration of these extenuating circumstances detracted from the picturesque aspect of the case. ‘Oh, yes, he did that, but my father he al’ays said it were a poor way o’ makin’ a livin’. “Save up, ’Lias, my boy,” he al’ays did use to say to I. “Save up and buy a bit o’ land for yourself.” So I scraped and scrimped and laid by; and my first missus, she were a very thrifty body, a very thrifty body she were. She put her shoulder to the wheel too, and when old Meatyard died we bought the farm, and things did prosper wi’ us very well since—till my last poor wife died; then all did go wrong wi’ I. Aye, as I say, if I do seem more set on matrimony than other folks, ’t is because the Lord ha’ marked I out for ’t. Now you, Isaac, never was called that way, seemingly.’