breeze play upon their foreheads.

Rough though it be, the childhood of the cottage girl is not without its
recompenses, the most valuable of which is sturdy health. Now that good
schools are open to every village, so soon as the children are old enough
to walk the distance, often considerable, they are sent off every morning.
At all events, if it does nothing else, it causes the mothers to give them
a daily tidying up, which is in itself an advantage. They travel under the
charge of the girl; often two or three such small parties join company,
coming from as many cottages. In the warmer months, the lanes and fields
they cross form a long playground for them, and picking flowers and
searching for birds'-nests pass away the time. In winter they have to face
the mire and rain.

When the girl leaves school she is hardly old enough to enter service, and
too often in the year or so that elapses before she 'goes out' much
mischief is done. She is then at an age when the mind is peculiarly
receptive, and the ways of the young labourers with whom she is thrown
into contact are not very refined. Her first essay at 'service' is often
as day-nursemaid at some adjacent farmhouse, taking care of the younger
children in the day, and returning home to sleep. She then wanders with
the children about the same fields she visited long before. This system
used to be common enough, but latterly it has not worked well, because the
parents expect the girl to progress so rapidly. She must be a woman and
receive a woman's wages almost before she has ceased to be a girl. If she
does not disdain to enter a farmhouse as kitchen-maid her wages will
probably be about six pounds a year at first. Of course the exact sum
varies very much in different localities and in different cases. It is but
a small sum of money, yet it is often all she is worth.

The cottage is a poor preparation even for the humblest middle-class home.
Those ladies in towns who have engaged country servants are well aware of
the amount of teaching they require before they can go through the
simplest duties in a satisfactory manner. But most of these girls have
already been out several times before reaching town. What a difficulty,
then, the first farmer's wife must have had in drilling the rudiments of
civilised life into them! Indeed, the vexations and annoyances connected
with servants are no light weight upon the patience of the tenant-farmer.
His wife is perpetually preparin