ir
circumstances. Nobody supposed that they were a wrong or a regrettable
type who ought to be "done good to" or reformed. They belonged to their
own set. They were English, of course; but they were outside the
ordinary classifications of English society.

Even towards those of them who went out of the valley to earn wages
this was still the attitude. They went out as peasants, and were
esteemed because they had the ability of peasants. In much the same way
as country folk on the Continent take their country produce into town
markets the men of this valley took, into the hop-grounds and fields of
the neighbouring valley, or into its old-fashioned streets and stable
yards, their toughness, their handiness, their intimate understanding of
country crafts; and, returning home in the evening, they slipped back
again into their natural peasant state, without any feeling of
disharmony from the day's employment.

There was no reason why it should be otherwise. Although, at work, they
had come into contact with people unlike themselves in some ways, the
contrast was not of such a kind that it disheartened or seemed to
disgrace them. At the time of the enclosure of the common, a notable
development, certainly, was beginning amongst the employing classes, but
it had not then proceeded far. Of course the day of the yeoman farmer
was almost done; and with it there had disappeared some of that equality
which permitted wage-earning men to be on such easy terms with their
masters as one hears old people describe. No longer, probably, would a
farmer take a nickname from his men, or suffer them to call his
daughters familiarly by their Christian names; and no longer did master
and man live on quite the same quality of food, or dress in the same
sort of clothes. Nevertheless the distinction between employers and
employed--between the lower middle-class and the working-class--was not
nearly so marked fifty years ago as it has since become. The farmers,
for their part, were still veritable country folk, inheritors themselves
of a set of rural traditions nearly akin to those of the peasant
squatters in this valley. And even the townsmen, who were the only
others who could give employment to these villagers, were extremely
countrified in character. In their little sleepy old town--not half its
present size, and the centre then of an agricultural and especially a
hop-growing district--people were intimately interested in country
things. No m