“Well, Chowne’s been wanting to buy Sally, so we can get rid of her if thee lik’st,” said Mr. Poyser, secretly proud of his wife’s superior power of putting two and two together; indeed, on recent market-days he had more than once boasted of her discernment in this very matter of shorthorns.  “Aye, them as choose a soft for a wife may’s well buy up the shorthorns, for if you get your head stuck in a bog, your legs may’s well go after it.  Eh!  Talk o’ legs, there’s legs for you,” Mrs. Poyser continued, as Totty, who had been set down now the road was dry, toddled on in front of her father and mother.  “There’s shapes!  An’ she’s got such a long foot, she’ll be her father’s own child.”

“Aye, she’ll be welly such a one as Hetty i’ ten years’ time, on’y she’s got thy coloured eyes.  I niver remember a blue eye i’ my family; my mother had eyes as black as sloes, just like Hetty’s.”

“The child ’ull be none the worse for having summat as isn’t like Hetty.  An’ I’m none for having her so overpretty.  Though for the matter o’ that, there’s people wi’ light hair an’ blue eyes as pretty as them wi’ black.  If Dinah had got a bit o’ colour in her cheeks, an’ didn’t stick that Methodist cap on her head, enough to frighten the cows, folks ’ud think her as pretty as Hetty.”

“Nay, nay,” said Mr. Poyser, with rather a contemptuous emphasis, “thee dostna know the pints of a woman.  The men ’ud niver run after Dinah as they would after Hetty.”

“What care I what the men ’ud run after?  It’s well seen what choice the most of ’em know how to make, by the poor draggle-tails o’ wives you see, like bits o’ gauze ribbin, good for nothing when the colour’s gone.”

“Well, well, thee canstna say but what I knowed how to make a choice when I married thee,” said Mr. Poyser, who usually settled little conjugal disputes by a compliment of this sort; “and thee wast twice as buxom as Dinah ten year ago.”

“I niver said as a woman had need to be ugly to make a good missis of a house.  There’s Chowne’s wife ugly enough to turn the milk an’ save the rennet, but she’ll niver save nothing any other way.  But as for Dinah, poor child, she’s niver likely to be buxom as long as she’ll make her dinner o’ cake and water, for the sake o’ giving to them as want.  She provoked me past bearing sometimes; and, as I told her, she went clean again’ the Scriptur’, for that says, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’; ‘but,’ I said, ’if you loved your neighbour no better nor you do yourself, Dinah, it’s little enough you’d do for him.  You’d be thinking he might do well enough on a half-empty stomach.’  Eh, I wonder where she is this blessed Sunday!  Sitting by that sick woman, I daresay, as she’d set her heart on going to all of a sudden.”

“Ah, it was a pity she should take such megrims into her head, when she might ha’ stayed wi’ us all summer, and eaten twice as much as she wanted, and it ‘ud niver ha’ been missed.  She made no odds in th’ house at all, for she sat as still at her sewing as a bird on the nest, and was uncommon nimble at running to fetch anything.  If Hetty gets married, theed’st like to ha’ Dinah wi’ thee constant.”