the oven was hot enough by the gauge-brick: this particular brick
as the heat increased became spotted with white, and when it had
turned quite white the oven was ready. The wood embers were raked
out with the scraper, and the malkin, being wetted, cleaned out the
ashes. 'Thee looks like a gurt malkin' is a common term of reproach
among the poor folk--meaning a bunch of rags on the end of a stick.
We went out to look at the oven; and then Mrs. Luckett made me taste
her black-currant gin, which was very good. Presently we went into
the orchard to look at the first apple-tree out in bloom. While
there a magpie flew across the meadow, and as I watched it Mrs.
Luckett advised me to turn my back and not to look too long in that
direction. 'For,' said she, 'one magpie is good luck, but two mean
sorrow; and if you should see three--goodness!--something awful
might happen.'[1]

[1] See Notes.

One lovely June afternoon as Hilary and I strolled about the fields,
we passed some lambs at play. 'Lamb is never good eating without
sunshine,' said Hilary. Not only wheat and plants generally but
animals also are affected by the absence of sun, so that the epicure
should hope as devoutly as the farmer that the dull and overcast
season of 1879 will not be repeated. Hilary's remark was founded upon
the experience of long years--such experience as is only to be found
in farmhouses where kindred succeed each other, and hand down
practical observations from father to son.

The thistles were showing rather strongly in the barley--the result of
last year's rain and the consequent impossibility of proper clearing.
These thistles he thought came from portions of the root and not from
seed. Last year all the farmers had been Latter Lammas men. The 1st of
August is Lammas Day; and in the old time if a farmer had neglected
his work and his haymaking was still unfinished on August 13 (_i.e._
old style), he was called in reproach a Latter Lammas man. But last
year (1879) they were all alike, and the hay was about till September;
yet Hilary could recollect it being all done by St. Swithin's, July
15.

Sometimes, however, the skilled and careful agriculturist did not
succeed so well as the lazy one. Once in seven years there came a
sloven's year, according to the old folk, when the sloven had a
splendid crop of wheat and hardly knew where to put it. Such a harvest
was as if a man had gone round his farm with the sun in one hand and
the wa