time
dropping a-sprawl. The women, without the least excitement or
surprise, quietly endeavoured to assist him up; and, as he resisted,
one of them remarked in the driest matter-of-fact tone, 'Ourn be just
like un--as contrary as the wind.' She alluded to her own husband.

When I mentioned this incident afterwards to Mrs. Luckett, she said
the troubles the cottage women underwent on account of the 'beer' were
past belief. One woman who did some work at the farmhouse kept her
cottage entirely by her own exertions; her husband doing nothing but
drink. He took her money from her by force, nor could she hide it
anywhere but what he would hunt it out. At last in despair she dropped
the silver in the jug on the wash-hand basin, and had the satisfaction
of seeing him turn everything topsy-turvy in a vain attempt to find
it. As he never washed, it never occurred to him to look in the
water-jug.

The cottage women when they went into Overboro' shopping, she said,
were the despair of the drapers. A woman, with two or three more to
chorus her sentiments, would go into a shop and examine half-a-dozen
dress fabrics, rubbing each between her work-hardened fingers and
thumb till the shopkeeper winced, expecting to see it torn. After
trying several and getting the counter covered she would push them
aside, contemptuously remarking, 'I don't like this yer shallygallee
(flimsy) stuff. Haven't'ee got any gingham tackle?' Whereat the poor
draper would cast down a fresh roll of stoutest material with the
reply: 'Here, ma'am. Here's something that will wear like pin-wire.'
This did better, but was declared to be 'gallus dear.'

Even within recent years, now and then a servant-girl upon entering
service at the farmhouse would refuse to touch butcher's meat. She had
never tasted anything but bacon at home, and could only be persuaded
to eat fresh meat with difficulty, being afraid she should not like
it. One girl who came from a lonely cottage in a distant
'coombe-bottom' of the Downs was observed never to write home or
attempt to communicate with her parents. She said it was of no use; no
postman came near, and the letters they wrote or the letters written
to them never reached their destination. 'Coombe-bottom' is a curious
duplication--either word being used to indicate a narrow valley or
hollow. An unfortunate child who lived there had never been so well
since the stone roller went over his head. She had a lover, but he was
'a gurt hum