to the dairy, where Hetty was making up the butter, and from the dairy to the back kitchen, where Nancy was taking the pies out of the oven.  Do not suppose, however, that Mrs. Poyser was elderly or shrewish in her appearance; she was a good-looking woman, not more than eight-and-thirty, of fair complexion and sandy hair, well-shapen, light-footed.  The most conspicuous article in her attire was an ample checkered linen apron, which almost covered her skirt; and nothing could be plainer or less noticeable than her cap and gown, for there was no weakness of which she was less tolerant than feminine vanity, and the preference of ornament to utility.  The family likeness between her and her niece Dinah Morris, with the contrast between her keenness and Dinah’s seraphic gentleness of expression, might have served a painter as an excellent suggestion for a Martha and Mary.  Their eyes were just of the same colour, but a striking test of the difference in their operation was seen in the demeanour of Trip, the black-and-tan terrier, whenever that much-suspected dog unwarily exposed himself to the freezing arctic ray of Mrs. Poyser’s glance.  Her tongue was not less keen than her eye, and, whenever a damsel came within earshot, seemed to take up an unfinished lecture, as a barrel-organ takes up a tune, precisely at the point where it had left off.

The fact that it was churning day was another reason why it was inconvenient to have the whittaws, and why, consequently, Mrs. Poyser should scold Molly the housemaid with unusual severity.  To all appearance Molly had got through her after-dinner work in an exemplary manner, had “cleaned herself” with great dispatch, and now came to ask, submissively, if she should sit down to her spinning till milking time.  But this blameless conduct, according to Mrs. Poyser, shrouded a secret indulgence of unbecoming wishes, which she now dragged forth and held up to Molly’s view with cutting eloquence.

“Spinning, indeed!  It isn’t spinning as you’d be at, I’ll be bound, and let you have your own way.  I never knew your equals for gallowsness.  To think of a gell o’ your age wanting to go and sit with half-a-dozen men!  I’d ha’ been ashamed to let the words pass over my lips if I’d been you.  And you, as have been here ever since last Michaelmas, and I hired you at Treddles’on stattits, without a bit o’ character—­as I say, you might be grateful to be hired in that way to a respectable place; and you knew no more o’ what belongs to work when you come here than the mawkin i’ the field.  As poor a two-fisted thing as ever I saw, you know you was.  Who taught you to scrub a floor, I should like to know?  Why, you’d leave the dirt in heaps i’ the corners—­anybody ’ud think you’d never been brought up among Christians.  And as for spinning, why, you’ve wasted as much as your wage i’ the flax you’ve spoiled learning to spin.  And you’ve a right to feel that, and not to go about as gaping and as thoughtless as if you was beholding to nobody.