The girls go less and less into the field.  If at home, they assist their parents at harvest time when work is done by the acre, and the more a man can cut the better he is off; but their aim is domestic service, and they prefer to be engaged in the towns.  They shirk the work of a farmhouse, especially if it is a dairy, and so it has come to be quite a complaint among farmers’ wives, in many places, that servants are not to be obtained.  Those that are available are mere children, whose mothers like them to go out anywhere at first, just to obtain an insight into the duties of a servant.  The farmer’s wife has the trouble and annoyance of teaching these girls the rudiments of household work, and then, the moment they are beginning to be useful, they leave, and almost invariably go to the towns.  Those that remain are the slow-witted, or those who are tied in a measure by family difficulties—­as a bedridden mother to attend to; or, perhaps, an illegitimate child of her own may fetter the cottage girl.  Then she goes out in the daytime to work at the farmhouse, and returns to sleep at home.

Cottage girls have taken to themselves no small airs of recent years—­they dress, so far as their means will go, as flashily as servants in cities, and stand upon their dignity.  This foolishness has, perhaps, one good effect—­it tends to diminish the illegitimate births.  The girls are learning more self-respect—­if they could only achieve that and eschew the other follies it would be a clear gain.  It may be questioned whether purely agricultural marriages are as common as formerly.  The girl who leaves her home for service in the towns sees a class of men—­grooms, footmen, artisans, and workmen generally—­not only receiving higher wages than the labourers in her native parish, but possessing a certain amount of comparative refinement.  It is not surprising that she prefers, if possible, to marry among these.

On the other hand, the young labourer, who knows that he can get good wages wherever he likes to go, has become somewhat of a wanderer.  He roams about, not only from village to village, but from county to county; perhaps works for a time as a navvy on some distant railway, and thus associates with a different class of men, and picks up a sort of coarse cynicism.  He does not care to marry and settle and tie himself down to a routine of labour—­he despises home pleasures, preferring to spend his entire earnings upon himself.  The roaming habits of the rising generation of labourers is an important consideration, and it has an effect in many ways.  Statistics are not available; but the impression left on the mind is that purely rural marriages are not so frequent, notwithstanding that wages at large have risen.  When a young man does marry, he and his wife not uncommonly live for a length of time with his parents, occupying a part of the cottage.