e and there, and barked at in
volleys by dogs stationed on all the higher islets in the unsavoury
lake. If Dora had not been a colonial child, and if I could have
feared for myself with Harold by my side, I don't think we should ever
have arrived, but Farmer Ogden and his son came out, and a man and boy
or two; and when Eustace was recognised, they made what way they could
for us, and we were landed at last in a scrupulously clean kitchen with
peat fire and a limeash floor, where, alas! we were not suffered to
remain, but were taken into a horrid little parlour, with a
newly-lighted, smoking fire, a big Bible, and a ploughing-cup. Mrs.
Ogden was a dissenter, so we had really no acquaintance, and, poor
thing, had long been unable to go anywhere. She was a pale trembling
creature, most neat and clean, but with the dreadful sallow complexion
given by perpetual ague. She was very civil, and gave us cake and
wine, to the former of which Dora did ample justice, but oh! the
impracticability of those people!

The men had it all out of doors, but when I tried my eloquence on Mrs.
Ogden I found her firmly persuaded not only that her own ill health and
the sickness in the hamlet were "the will of the Lord," but in her
religious fatalism, that it was absolutely profane to think that
cleansing and drainage would amend them; and she adduced texts which
poor uninstructed I was unable to answer, even while I knew they were a
perversion; and, provoked as I was, I felt that her meek patience and
resignation might be higher virtues than any to which I had yet
attained.

Her husband, who, I should explain, was but one remove above a
smock-frock farmer, took a different line. He had unsavoury proverbs
in which he put deep faith. "Muck was the mother of money," and also
"Muck was the farmer's nosegay." He viewed it as an absolute
effeminacy to object to its odorous savours; and as to the poor people,
"they were an ungrateful lot, and had a great deal too much done for
them," the small farmer's usual creed. Mr. Alison could do as he
liked, of course, but his lease had five years yet to run, and he would
not consent to pay no more rent, not for what he didn't ask for, nor
didn't want, and Mr. Bullock didn't approve of--that he would not, not
if Mr. Alison took the law of him.

His landlord do it at his own expense? That made him look knowing. He
was evidently certain that it was a trick for raising the rent at the
end of the lease,