196 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—ifit 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 
