"I ain't got half a bundle," she grunted. "Thaay won't let a pore old body glean when a-can't rip." "Well, it's beautiful weather for the harvest." "Aw, eez--the het [heat] makes um giddy: our ould Bill fell down; the gearden be a-spoiling for rain." "The farmers pay good wages now, don't they?" "Um pays what um be obliged to." "You have a good landlord here--Squire Thorpe." "_He_! Drotted ould skinvlint! You go and look at thaay cottages: thaay be his'n. The rain comes drough the thatch, and he won't mend it. I be forced to put a umberella auver my bed nights when it rains." "At all events, the farmers like him." "Do um? Never heard say zo. His rabbits yeats their crops like a flock of sheep." "The vicar--Mr Basil--is kind to the poor, is he not?" asked Valentine, forgetting for the moment his own ill-temper in the old woman's bitterness and abuse of everybody and everything. He was most surprised at her venomous spite against the squire, who he knew was of a kindly disposition. She perfectly hissed at the mention of the vicar. "Our paason! ould varmint--a gives all the coals and blankets at Christmas to thaay as goes to church, and narn to thaay as be chapel-volk. What have he done with the widders' money, I wants to knaw?" "What money was that?" "Why, that as was left to us widders of this yer parish for ever: you med see it stuck up in the chancel. I never seed none of it, nor anybody else as ever I heard tell on." "But you get wine and luxuries, no doubt, when ill?" "A vine lot: it bean't for such as we." "You seem to have some industrious people in the village, however: now, that little grocer's shop where they sell--" "You means Betsy Warren, what sells tobacco and snuff and lollipops and whipcord. Her buys hares and birds from the poachers--her will get notice to quit zum o' these yer days." "But the blacksmith works hard. I always hear his hammer when I go by." "What--_he_! The justices fined he a pound a bit ago for fighting Mathew the cobbler. Mathew lives with Thompson's wife--he as was transported for firing Farmer Ruck's rick-barken. That be a vine thing--her be as bad as he." "The new school will set you to rights." "Aw, will a'? The schoolmaster kissed one of the wenches, and got sent away; but them Timothy wenches bean't no better than um should be." "Who's Timothy?" "Doan't you knaw ould Timothy? He be a mower--a' will drink dree gallons a day. That young Sam'l lodges with he: he be a shepherd, a' be a new chap. I doan't knaw much about he, but I've hearn as a' had six weeks for stealing lambs." "H'm!" said Valentine, smiling. "They all seem a bad lot." "Zo um be." "But surely Mrs Estcourt is good to the poor: you don't know anything against her?" "Aw, doan't I? What be her daughter up to? What wur her a-doing on the Down thuck night with thuck gurt lanky chap from the squire's as goes arter her? Mebbe you knaws un."