. An idle
good-for-nothing set! Any magistrate would tell you that there's no
parish where they have so many up before them."

"No wonder!" said Captain Carbonel under his breath.

"A bad set," repeated Mr Atkins, pausing at the shed where his old grey
horse was put up; and there they parted.

The captain and his wife and her sister walked to Downhill, two miles
off, across broad meadows, a river, and a pretty old bridge, the next
Sunday morning, found the church scantily filled, but with more
respectable-looking people, and heard the same sermon over again, so
that Mary was able to identify it with one in a published volume.

CHAPTER THREE.

THE TURNIP FIELD.

"You ask me why the poor complain,
And these have answered thee."
_Southey_.

"Hullo, Molly Hewlett, who'd ha' thought of seeing you out here?"

It was in a wet turnip field, and a row of women were stooping over it,
picking out the weeds. The one that was best off had great boots, a
huge weight to carry in themselves; but most had them sadly torn and
broken. Their skirts, of no particular colour, were tucked up, and they
had either a very old man's coat, or a smock-frock cut short, or a small
old woollen shawl, which last left the blue and red arms bare; on their
heads were the oldest of bonnets, or here and there a sun-bonnet, which
looked more decent. One or two babies were waiting in the hedgeside in
the charge of little girls.

"Molly Hewlett," exclaimed another of the set, straightening herself up.
"Why, I thought your Dan was working with Master Hewlett, for they
Gobblealls," (which was what Uphill made of Carbonel).

"So he be; but what is a poor woman to do when more than half his wage
goes to the `Fox and Hounds,' and she has five children to keep and my
poor sister, not able to do a turn? There's George Hewlett, grumbling
and growling at him too, and no one knows how long he'll keep him on."

"What! George, his cousin, as was bound to keep him on?"

"I don't know; George is that particular himself, and them new folks,
Gobbleall as they call them, are right down mean, and come down on you
if they misses one little mossle of parkisit; and there's my poor sister
to keep--as is afflicted, and can't do nothing!"

"But she pays you handsome," said Betsy Seddon, "and looks after the
children besides."

"Pays, indeed! Not half enough to keep her, with all the trouble of
helping her about! Not that I grudges it, but she want