“Why, you see,” said Blithe Natty, “its often ‘like master like man’; pipe i’t parlour, dance i’t kitchen; an’ maybe if you were to do your duty to them a little better they would do better by you. ‘Give a pint an’ gain a peck; give a noggin’ an’ get nowt.’” Kasper Crabtree did not relish this salutary home-thrust, and made haste to change the subject. “What a glorious morning it is!” said he, “it’s grand weather for t’ young corn.” “Aye,” said Natty, “I passed by your forty-acre field yesterday, and your wheat looked splendid. The rows of bright fresh green looked very bonny, and the soil was as clean as a new pin.” “Hey, hey,” said old Crabtree, for he was proud of his farming, and boasted that his management was without equal in the Riding, “I’ll warrant there isn’t much in the way of weeds, though it’s a parlous job to keep ’em under. It beats me to know why weeds should grow so much faster than corn, and so much more plentiful.” “Why, you see, Farmer Crabtree, weeds are nat’ral. The soil is their mother, an’ you know it’s only stepmother to the corn, or you wouldn’t have to sow it; and stepmothers’ bairns don’t often thrive well. However, I’m pretty sure that you are a match for all the weeds that grow--in the fields, at any rate.” “Hey, or anywhere else,” said the boastful farmer. “Why, I don’t know so much about that,” said Natty. “There’s a pesky lot o’ rubbish i’ the heart, Maister Crabtree, an’ like wicks an’ couch grass there’s no getting to the bottom on em. The love of money, now, is the root of”---- But Kasper Crabtree was off like a shot, for Blithe Natty’s metaphor was coming uncomfortably close to a personal application, and his hearer knew of old that Nathan was in the habit of striking as hard with his tongue as he did with his hammer, so he rapidly beat a retreat. Natty’s face broadened into a smile as he pulled amain at the handle of his bellows, and then drawing from the fire the red-hot coulter he was shaping, he began thumping away amid a shower of fiery spray, singing, as his wont was-- Put in the ploughshare and turn up the soil; Harrow the seed in and sing at the toil, Hoe up the ketlocks and pull up the weeds; Toiling and hoping till harvest succeeds. Hearts are like fallow, and need to be tilled; Nothing but evil things else will they yield. Plough them well, sow them well; crops of good deeds Follow, if only we keep down the weeds. Keep down the weeds, brothers, keep down the weeds! God sends His sunshine, and harvest succeeds. The coulter was again thrust into the fire, and once again the long lever of the blacksmith’s bellows, with a cow’s horn by way of handle, was gripped to raise another “heat,” when a second visitor crossed the smithy threshold, as different from the grim, gaunt, wrinkled and forbidding form and features of old Kasper Crabtree as a briar-rose differs from a hedgestake, an icicle from a sunbeam, or a polar bear from a summer fawn.