A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 211 



landlord, well, I don't see him more'n once or twice a 

 year, when they shoots the big wood and the planta- 

 tions ; mos' generally they has lunch at my place, 

 but of course you can't do no business then. It's 

 alias the agent, when you want anything done ; and 

 they sends down a young chap in new trousers and 

 brown leather boots, to walk through my yard to look 

 at the pig-pound that wants new-healin'. Brown ? 

 Yes, they was brown enough when we come out ! O' 

 course you can't expec' Mr. Newcome, as made his 

 money in hay-rated waters, to know anything about 

 farmin' ; but that agent's young man as comes down 

 from the office in town, he'll lose 'em a tidy few hun- 

 dreds a year, I reckon. I says to him, ' Mr. Weeks/ 

 I says, ' it 'ud pay you to get a man to tell you the 

 difference between a two-shear teg and a Old Gate- 

 post mangel. I give you my word,' I says, * I'm 

 doing the land as it ought to be done ; but for ought 

 you knows I might be skinnin' the farm down to the 

 gravel.' " 



" Of course," I say, " a landowner ought to under- 

 stand the land ; and then it would pay him to look 

 after the farms himself." 



" I didn't never hear of nobody as wouldn't say 

 so, that had tried it," is Avery's somewhat Sibylline 

 response, with a fine Sussex collocation of negatives. 



