Hiram Hey, meanwhile, was going his leisurely way, glancing curiously at the Lean Man as he went by, but not guessing that he was furnishing him with food for talk. He slouched along the pasture-fields stopping at every other step to watch the sport of heifers, to note a broken piece of walling, or to berate some luckless farm-lad whom he found at play. "I wodn’t call it a fair day, for we’ve not done wi’ ’t yet," he murmured. "Nay, I wodn’t call it a fair day, an’ that’s Gospel, till I see how it behaves itseln. We mud varry weel hev snow afore it wears to neet, or else thunner—or both, likely." He leaned over a three-barred gate and eyed the long furrows climbing to the hill-crest—sleek furrows, with dust lying grey on the sun-side of the upturned sods. And while he lazied there, a milking-song came clear and crisp from over the wall that hid the High meadow from him. "That’s Martha," he cried, brightening on the sudden. "She sings like ony bird, does th’ lass. What should she be doing, I wonder, so far fro’ Marsh on a working-day?" His step had an unwonted briskness in it, his carriage was almost jaunty, as he moved along the wall-side to the stile at the corner. A milk-pail was showing now above the top step of the stile, with a cherry-ripe face and trim, short skirted figure under it. Martha halted on seeing Hiram Hey, and set two round, brown arms to the pail, and lifted it down to the wall; then leaned with one hand on it while she dropped a saucy curtsey. "It’s warm," ventured Hiram, picking up a stone from the grass and throwing it aside. "Warm? I should reckon it is. Tha’d say so if tha’d carried this pail a-top o’ thy head for a mile an’ better.—But, Lord, we munnot complain, for ’tis a day i’ five-score, this, an’ warm as midsummer." "Thee bide a bittock, as I telled young Maister this morn. ’Spring’s come again, Hiram,’ says he to me. ’Mebbe,’ says I, ’but when a man’s lived to my years he learns to believe owt o’ th’ weather—save gooid sense.’ That’s what I said, for sure." "Tha’rt not so thrang as or’nary, seemingly?" said Martha, after a pause. Hiram glanced at her, as if suspecting mockery. "Nay, I’m allus thrang," he answered, shaking his head in mournful fashion. "I’ve heard folk say I do nowt just because they’ve seen me hands-i’-pocket time an’ time; but when ye’re maister-hand at a farm, there’s head-work to be done as weel as body-work." "To be sure—an’ ’tis fearful hard, is head-work." "Ay, I oft say to shepherd Jose that th’ humbler your station i’ this life, th’ fewer frets ye hev." "I feel fair pitiful for thee, Hiram," said Martha, glancing softly at him across the pail, "when I see what worries tha hes to put up wi’." Hiram came a step nearer. "Tha mud weel pity me, lass. ’Tis grand to be sich chaps as Jose—all body, i’ a way o’ speaking, an’ no head-piece worth naming to come ’twixt victuals an’ their appetites.—Martha, lass, I’ve oft wondered how tha came to be born a wench."