to the farm, for the children born before him had died, and so Hetty had had them all three, one after the other, toddling by her side in the meadow, or playing about her on wet days in the half-empty rooms of the large old house.  The boys were out of hand now, but Totty was still a day-long plague, worse than either of the others had been, because there was more fuss made about her.  And there was no end to the making and mending of clothes.  Hetty would have been glad to hear that she should never see a child again; they were worse than the nasty little lambs that the shepherd was always bringing in to be taken special care of in lambing time; for the lambs were got rid of sooner or later.  As for the young chickens and turkeys, Hetty would have hated the very word “hatching,” if her aunt had not bribed her to attend to the young poultry by promising her the proceeds of one out of every brood.  The round downy chicks peeping out from under their mother’s wing never touched Hetty with any pleasure; that was not the sort of prettiness she cared about, but she did care about the prettiness of the new things she would buy for herself at Treddleston Fair with the money they fetched.  And yet she looked so dimpled, so charming, as she stooped down to put the soaked bread under the hen-coop, that you must have been a very acute personage indeed to suspect her of that hardness.  Molly, the housemaid, with a turn-up nose and a protuberant jaw, was really a tender-hearted girl, and, as Mrs. Poyser said, a jewel to look after the poultry; but her stolid face showed nothing of this maternal delight, any more than a brown earthenware pitcher will show the light of the lamp within it.

It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the “dear deceit” of beauty, so it is not surprising that Mrs. Poyser, with her keenness and abundant opportunity for observation, should have formed a tolerably fair estimate of what might be expected from Hetty in the way of feeling, and in moments of indignation she had sometimes spoken with great openness on the subject to her husband.

“She’s no better than a peacock, as ’ud strut about on the wall and spread its tail when the sun shone if all the folks i’ the parish was dying:  there’s nothing seems to give her a turn i’ th’ inside, not even when we thought Totty had tumbled into the pit.  To think o’ that dear cherub!  And we found her wi’ her little shoes stuck i’ the mud an’ crying fit to break her heart by the far horse-pit.  But Hetty never minded it, I could see, though she’s been at the nussin’ o’ the child ever since it was a babby.  It’s my belief her heart’s as hard as a pebble.”

“Nay, nay,” said Mr. Poyser, “thee mustn’t judge Hetty too hard.  Them young gells are like the unripe grain; they’ll make good meal by and by, but they’re squashy as yet.  Thee’t see Hetty ’ll be all right when she’s got a good husband and children of her own.”