to wit),
and yielded such rich milk; it far surpassed that of the shorthorn; there
was the analysis to prove it! Such milk must of course be worth money,
beside which there were the kids, and the cheese and butter.

Alas! the goats quickly obtained so evil a reputation, worse than that of
the rabbits for biting off the shooting vegetation, that no one would have
them on the land. The milk was all the analysis declared it, but in that
outlying village, which did not contain two houses above the quality of a
farmstead, there was no one to buy it. There was a prejudice against the
butter which could not be got over; and the cheese--well, the cheese
resembled a tablet of dark soap. Hodge would not eat it at a gift; he
smelt it, picked a morsel off on the tip of his clasp knife, and threw it
aside in contempt. One by one the goats were got rid of, and now but two
or three remained; she could not make up her mind to part with all, for
living creatures, however greatly they have disappointed, always enlist
the sympathies of women.

Poultry was the next grand discovery--they ate their heads off, refused to
lay eggs, and, when by frequent purchase they became numerous and promised
to pay, quietly died by the score, seized with an epidemic. She learnt in
visiting the cottagers how profitable their allotment gardens were to
them, and naturally proceeded to argue that a larger piece of ground would
yield proportionately larger profit if cultivated on the same principle.
If the cottagers could pay a rent for an acre which, in the aggregate, was
three times that given by the ordinary farmer, and could even then make a
good thing of it, surely intelligence and skill might do the same on a
more extended scale. How very foolish the farmers were! they might raise
at least four times the produce they did, and they might pay three times
the rent. As the vicar had some hundred and fifty acres of glebe let at
the usual agricultural rent, if the tenants could be persuaded or
instructed to farm on the cottager's system, what an immense increase it
would be to his income! The tenants, however, did not see it. They
shrugged their shoulders, and made no movement The energetic lady resolved
to set an example, and to prove to them that they were wrong.

She rented an acre of arable land (at the side of the field), giving the
tenant a fair price for it. First it had to be enclosed so as to be parted
off from the open field. The cost of the palings