"—that I knew not, dear Mistress Joscelyn," murmured Martin, "which to bite first."
"Good morrow, master!" cried the milkmaids loudly; and they fluttered their petticoats like sunshine between the man at the hedge and the man in the grass.
"Is my daughter any merrier this morning?"
"No, master," said Jennifer, "yet I think I see smiles on their way."
"If they lag much longer," muttered the farmer, "they'll be on the wrong side of her mouth when they do come. For what sort of a home will she return to?—a pothouse! and what sort of a father?—a drunkard! And the fault's hers that deprives him of the drink he loved in his sober days. Gillian!" he exclaimed, "when will ye give up this child's whim to learn by experience, and take an old man's word for it?"
But Gillian was as deaf to him as to the cock crowing in the barnyard.
"Come fetch your portion," said Old Gillman to the milkmaids, "since there's no help for it. And good day to ye, and a better morrow."
"Wait a bit, master!" entreated Jennifer, "and tell me if Daisy, my Lincoln Red, lacks for anything."
"For nothing that Tom can help her to, maid. But she lacks you, and lacking you, her milk. So that being a cow she may be said to lack everything. And so do I, and the men, and the farm—ruin's our portion, nothing but rack and ruin."
Saying which he departed.