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.”