“Say?  Why, I say you may do as you like about giving up any o’ your corn-land afore your lease is up, which it won’t be for a year come next Michaelmas, but I’ll not consent to take more dairy work into my hands, either for love or money; and there’s nayther love nor money here, as I can see, on’y other folks’s love o’ theirselves, and the money as is to go into other folks’s pockets.  I know there’s them as is born t’ own the land, and them as is born to sweat on’t”—­here Mrs. Poyser paused to gasp a little—­“and I know it’s christened folks’s duty to submit to their betters as fur as flesh and blood ’ull bear it; but I’ll not make a martyr o’ myself, and wear myself to skin and bone, and worret myself as if I was a churn wi’ butter a-coming in’t, for no landlord in England, not if he was King George himself.”

“No, no, my dear Mrs. Poyser, certainly not,” said the squire, still confident in his own powers of persuasion, “you must not overwork yourself; but don’t you think your work will rather be lessened than increased in this way?  There is so much milk required at the Abbey that you will have little increase of cheese and butter making from the addition to your dairy; and I believe selling the milk is the most profitable way of disposing of dairy produce, is it not?”

“Aye, that’s true,” said Mr. Poyser, unable to repress an opinion on a question of farming profits, and forgetting that it was not in this case a purely abstract question.

“I daresay,” said Mrs. Poyser bitterly, turning her head half-way towards her husband and looking at the vacant arm-chair—­“I daresay it’s true for men as sit i’ th’ chimney-corner and make believe as everything’s cut wi’ ins an’ outs to fit int’ everything else.  If you could make a pudding wi’ thinking o’ the batter, it ’ud be easy getting dinner.  How do I know whether the milk ’ull be wanted constant?  What’s to make me sure as the house won’t be put o’ board wage afore we’re many months older, and then I may have to lie awake o’ nights wi’ twenty gallons o’ milk on my mind—­and Dingall ’ull take no more butter, let alone paying for it; and we must fat pigs till we’re obliged to beg the butcher on our knees to buy ’em, and lose half of ’em wi’ the measles.  And there’s the fetching and carrying, as ’ud be welly half a day’s work for a man an’ hoss—­that’s to be took out o’ the profits, I reckon?  But there’s folks ’ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water.”

“That difficulty—­about the fetching and carrying—­you will not have, Mrs. Poyser,” said the squire, who thought that this entrance into particulars indicated a distant inclination to compromise on Mrs. Poyser’s part.  “Bethell will do that regularly with the cart and pony.”

“Oh, sir, begging your pardon, I’ve never been used t’ having gentlefolks’s servants coming about my back places, a-making love to both the gells at once and keeping ’em with their hands on their hips listening to all manner o’ gossip when they should be down on their knees a-scouring.  If we’re to go to ruin, it shanna be wi’ having our back kitchen turned into a public.”