, the cottage and garden is their own,
or is held on a small quit-rent. If either of the sons in time desires to
marry, he does not start utterly unprovided. His father's influence with
the farmer is pretty sure to procure him a cottage; he has some small
savings himself, and his parents in the course of years have accumulated
some extra furniture, which is given to him.

If a cottage, where the occupants are steady like this, be visited in the
evening, say towards seven o'clock, when dinner is on the table (labourers
dining or supping after the conclusion of the day's work), the fare will
often be found of a substantial character. There may be a piece of
mutton--not, of course, the prime cut, but wholesome meat--cabbages,
parsnips, carrots (labourers like a profusion of vegetables), all laid out
in a decent manner. The food is plain, but solid and plentiful. If the
sister out in service wishes to change her situation, she has a home to go
to meanwhile. Should any dispute occur with the employer the cottage is
still there, and affords a shelter till the difficulty is settled or other
work obtained. In towns the workman who has been earning six or even ten
shillings a day, and paying a high rent (carefully collected every week),
no sooner gets his discharge than he receives notice to quit his lodgings,
because the owner knows he will not be paid. But when the agricultural
labourer has a quit-rent cottage, or one of his own, he has a permanent
resource, and can look round for another engagement.

The cooking in the best cottages would not commend itself to the student
of that art: in those where the woman is shiftless it would be deemed
simply intolerable. Evidence of this is only too apparent on approaching
cottages, especially towards the evening. Coming from the fresh air of the
fields, perhaps from the sweet scent of clover or of new-mown grass, the
odour which arises from the cottages is peculiarly offensive. It is not
that they are dirty inside--the floor may be scrubbed, the walls brushed,
the chairs clean, and the beds tidy; it is from outside that all the
noisome exhalations taint the breeze. The refuse vegetables, the washings,
the liquid and solid rubbish generally is cast out into the ditch, often
open to the highway road, and there festers till the first storm sweeps it
away. The cleanest woman indoors thinks nothing disgusting out of doors,
and hardly goes a step from her threshold to cast away indescribable