"I bet it was a pigsty," said O'Connor, chuckling. "I was on'y here once, about six months ago, lookin' for a stray calf: but then I poked me nose into the kitchen, an' mighty quick took it out again."
"Well, they hadn't washed it since," Tom remarked.
"Not they. Well, it's all very well to laugh, but it was jolly rough on you, Mrs. Macleod. My word, you've got the place nice now! And the garden's a fair credit to you: it was the on'y part of the place where old Gordon did any work. As long as he could go fishin', much he cared for anything else. What was you thinkin' of doin' with the land?"
Tom gave a short laugh.
"I'm blessed if I know," he said. "To tell you the truth, I don't know a thing about it. I've a little stock running on it, so I've just been pegging away at getting things ship-shape before I tackled farming in earnest. What would you advise me to do with it, Mr. O'Connor?"
The big man drew out his pipe.
"Mind me smokin'? Well, it all depends. If you'd bought the place it'd be different; then I'd start clearin' it up a bit, if I was you. But you've on'y got it on a lease, an' so that ain't worth your while. Ol' Gordon'd never appreciate it, if you did clear it for him. No; you might dairy in earnest—an' a dawg's life it is; or you might run sheep an' a few calves. That's easier, an' it pays. Young stock does pretty well on these hills."
"That would suit me better," Tom said. "I'm too old to start dairying, not knowing anything about the game: and labour is too hard to get.
"That's so," agreed O'Connor. "An' when you've got men to milk, ain't you fair under their heel! They're boss, an' they make you know it. Why, I knew one man employin' six milkers: Mr. Beresford, up Lindenow way. Mrs. Beresford was doin' all the cookin' for them, and she wasn't a bit strong, either—a delicate lady, she was, an' awful nice: an' it was hot weather. They was beasts. If she sent 'em down a stew they'd put earth in it an' send it back and tell her they wanted joints; and one day she made 'em a ginger pudding, an' they chose to think it wasn't good enough for them, so they plastered up the cracks in the walls of their hut with it, and sent up word she had to make something else. An' she had to."
"Had to! I'd have seen them shot first!" Tom exclaimed.