rack his jokes it appeared that he had his own notions
of the ridiculous. He quizzed his nearest neighbor, an old man, who had
married a comparatively young woman, and whose children were forever
playing about Miss Foote's gate. When Harry joked about that unequal
match, Miss Foote could not laugh. She thought his own infinitely worse.
And the poor fellow soon saw that others were quizzing him, much more
severely than he had quizzed the old man. He looks grave about Dinah
now, and has left off talking of his own prudence in making such a
marriage. He has also told his sister that when Dinah dies he shall not
marry again. It is very painful; and yet Dinah is improved beyond all
that could have been anticipated. She has put off her false front, and
lets her grizzled hair appear. She no longer scans Miss Foote's face to
make out what it would be most acceptable that she should say, but
rattles away about her affairs with a sort of youthful glee. She no
longer speaks in a whining tone, but lets her voice take its own way.
One day she leaned on her rake (when she was trimming her own
flower-bed), and told Miss Foote, without any canting whatever, that she
had quite changed her mind about the maids since she came. She was
looking too far then, and so did not see what they were; but she found
in time that there was no slyness or pretense, but that they were really
good faithful girls, working for their employer's good, and with no
plots of their own. Old as Dinah seemed to be, there appears to be a
chance of her growing ingenuous and agreeable before she dies. The
gentry who come to the house observe that they never saw two people so
altered as Harry and Dinah; that they seem to have got new faces, a new
gait--a new mind.

Harry had other ridicule to wince about. The neighbors laughed at him
and his employer about their whole plan; they had never heard of keeping
cows on less than three acres per cow, or, at least, five acres for two;
they had never seen such deep digging; they had never known any body
take the trouble to remove stones, or do any thing but bury them out of
sight; they had never seen a currycomb used to a cow; they had never
known a hardworking man so poor-spirited as to be a water-drinker. The
milk must cost Miss Foote 6_d._ a quart; the cow would die; Harry would
wear himself out; and so forth. One day, the first winter, the cow was
very ill. Between the fear of the experiment being given up, and love
for the