Valentine, walking through the village, ascended a slight hill, and overtook an old woman of the working class, who was groaning and mumbling to herself, and bent almost double under a large bundle of gleanings on her shoulder, and a heavy basket in her hand. As he came up, he good-naturedly took the basket to relieve her, and accommodated his pace to hers.
“You seem to have a heavy load,” he said. In the dusk the old hag either did not recognise him, or perhaps did not care if she did.
“I ain’t got half a bundle,” she grunted. “Thaay won’t let a pore old body glean when a-can’t rip.”
“Well, it’s beautiful weather for the harvest.”
“Aw, eez—the het (heat) makes um giddy: our ould Bill fell down; the gearden be a-spoiling for rain.”
“The farmers pay good wages now, don’t they?”
“Um pays what um be obliged to.”
“You have a good landlord here—Squire Thorpe.”
“He! Drotted ould skinvlint! You go and look at thaay cottages: thaay be his’n. The rain comes drough the thatch, and he won’t mend it. I be forced to put a umberella auver my bed nights when it rains.”
“At all events, the farmers like him.”