rk. I hate your regular day-jobs, when one
can't well avoid doing one's work for one's money. Come, give me a
handful of the beans; I will teach thee how to plant when thou art
paid for planting by the peck. All we have to do in that case is to
dispatch the work as fast as we can, and get rid of the beans with all
speed; and as to the seed coming up or not, that is no business of
ours; we are paid for planting, not for growing. At the rate thou
goest on, thou wouldst not get sixpence to-night. Come along, hurry
away."

So saying, he took his hat-full of the seed, and where Dick had been
ordered to set one bean, Giles buried a dozen; so the beans were soon
out. But though the peck was emptied, the ground was unplanted. But
cunning Giles knew this could not be found out till the time when the
beans might be expected to come up; "and then, Dick," said he, "the
snails and mice may go shares in the blame; or we can lay the fault
on the rooks or the blackbirds." So saying, he sent the boy into the
parsonage to receive his pay, taking care to secure about a quarter of
the peck of beans for his own colt. He put both bag and beans into his
own pocket to carry home, bidding Dick tell Mr. Wilson that he had
planted the beans and lost the bag.

In the meantime Giles' other boys were busy in emptying the ponds and
trout-streams in the neighboring manor. They would steal away the carp
and tench when they were no bigger than gudgeons. By this untimely
depredation they plundered the owner of his property, without
enriching themselves. But the pleasure of mischief was reward enough.

These and a hundred other little thieveries they committed with such
dexterity, that old Tom Crib, whose son was transported last assizes
for sheep-stealing, used to be often reproaching his boys, that Giles'
sons were worth a hundred of such blockheads as he had; for scarce a
night passed but Giles had some little comfortable thing for supper
which his boys had pilfered in the day, while his undutiful dogs never
stole any thing worth having. Giles, in the meantime, was busy in his
way; but as busy as he was in laying nets, starting coveys, and
training dogs, he always took care that his depredations should not be
confined merely to game.

Giles' boys had never seen the inside of a church, and the father
thought he knew his own interest better than to force them to it; for
church-time was the season of their harvest. Then the hens' nests were
searched,