I 9 6 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



them. This may be foolish, but I expect it is human 

 nature. 



English folk don't ' cotton ' to their poverty at all ; 

 they don't eat humble-pie with a relish ; they resent 

 being poor and despised. Foreign folk seem to take to 

 it quite naturally ; an Englishman, somehow or other, 

 always feels that he is wronged. He is injured ; he has 

 not got his rights. To me it seems the most curious 

 thing possible that well-to-do people should expect the 

 poor to be delighted with their condition. I hope they 

 never will be ; an evil day that if it ever came for the 

 Anglo-Saxon race. 



One girl prided herself very much upon belonging to 

 a sort of club or insurance if she died, her mother would 

 receive ten pounds. Ten pounds, ten golden sovereigns 

 was to her such a magnificent sum, that she really ap- 

 peared to wish herself dead, in order that it might be 

 received. She harped and talked and brooded on it 

 constantly. If she caught cold it didn't matter, she 

 would say, her mother would have ten pounds. It 

 seemed a curious reversal of ideas, but it is a fact that 

 poor folk in course of time come to think less of death 

 than money. Another girl was describing to her mistress 

 how she met the carter's ghost in the rickyard ; the 

 waggon-wheel went over him ; but he continued to haunt 

 the old scene, and they met him as commonly as the 

 sparrows. 



' Did you ever speak to him ? ' 



' Oh no. You mustn't speak to them ; if you speak 

 to them they'll fly at you.' 



In winter the men were allowed to grub up the roots 

 of timber that had been thrown, and take the wood home 

 for their own use ; this kept them in fuel the winter 

 through without buying any. ' But they don't get paid 



