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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. Comb the wool for the
whittaws, indeed! That's what you'd like to be doing, is it? That's the
way with you--that's the road you'd all like to go, headlongs to ruin.
You're never easy till you've got some sweetheart as is as big a fool as
yourself: you think you'll be finely off when you're married, I daresay,
and have got a three-legged stool to sit on, and never a blanket to
cover you, and a bit o' oat-cake for your dinner, as three children are
a-snatching at."

"I'm sure I donna want t' go wi' the whittaws," said Molly, whimpering,
and quite overcome by this Dantean picture of her future, "on'y we
allays used to comb the wool for 'n at Mester Ottley's; an' so I just
axed ye. I donna want to set eyes on the whittaws again; I wish I may
never stir if I do."

"Mr. Ottley's, indeed! It's fine talking o' what you did at Mr.

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