e
labourer who, without a fixed place, took on piece-work at specially
busy times, will confirm this: "Go to a good farmer for wheat-hoeing,
and to a bad one for harvesting." I may explain that the fields of the
good farmer are clean and nearly free from weeds, so that hoeing is a
comparatively light job; but the same, or nearly the same, price per
acre is paid by the bad farmer, whose corn is overrun with weeds,
entailing much more time and harder work. On the other hand, the good
farmer's wheat crop is much heavier than that of the bad, and, the
prices for cutting being again very similar, more money _per diem_ can
be earned at harvest on the farm of the latter.

It is a sound old Worcestershire saying that "the time to hoe is when
there are no weeds"--apparently a paradox, but the meaning is simple:
when no weeds are to be seen above ground there are always millions of
tiny seedlings just below the surface ready to increase and multiply
wonderfully with a shower of rain; if attacked at the seedling stage,
these can be slaughtered in battalions, with far greater ease and
efficacy than when they become deep-rooted and established, and
dominate the crop.

I have heard of farmers to whom pay-night was a sore trial; one such
was frequently known to mount his horse and gallop away just before
his men appeared: how he settled eventually I do not know. Some
farmers will pay out of doors on their rounds, having a rooted
objection to business of any kind under a roof; and one small farmer,
I was told, always passed the cash to his men behind his back so that
he might not have the agony of parting actually before his eyes.

A labourer is supposed to come to work in his master's time and go
home in his own, thus sharing the necessary loss, and, as a rule, they
are fairly punctual; but one defaulter in this particular will waste
many moments of a whole gang working together, as it seems to be
etiquette not to begin till they are all present. I have often heard,
too, sarcastic comparisons made between the day-man and "the
any-time-of-day man."

The cottagers have their feuds, and the use of joint wash-houses or
baking-ovens between two or more adjoining cottages is a frequent
source. I have had excited wives of tenants coming to me at
unseasonable hours to settle these differences, and I found it a very
difficult business to reconcile the disputants. I could only visit the
_locus in quo_ and arrange fixed and separate days an