e; the outline is more
robust, their colouring more pronounced, and I think that "stately" is
the best description to apply to their distinguished bearing.

At Worcester, on market days, a great deal of butter is brought in by
the country people and retailed in the Market Hall, and many of these
farmers' wives and daughters have regular customers, who come each
week for their supply. On one occasion when the inspector of weights
and measures was making a surprise visit, and testing the weights of
the goods on offer, a man, standing near a stall where only one pound
of butter was left unsold, noticed that as soon as the owner became
aware of the inspector's entrance, she slipped two half-crowns into
the pat, obliterating the marks where they had been inserted. She was
evidently aware that the butter was not full weight, but with the
addition it satisfied the inspector's test, the two half-crowns just
balancing the one ounce short. No sooner was he gone than the
spectator came forward to buy the butter. She guessed that he had seen
the trick, and dared not refuse to sell, although she tried hard to
avoid doing so; so the cunning buyer walked off with fifteen ounces of
butter worth 1s. 2d., and 5s. in silver for his outlay of 1s. 3d.

In farm-houses where old-fashioned ways of butter-making are still
followed, and the thermometer is ignored, it happens sometimes that
after some hours' churning the butter does not "come." The traditional
remedy is then tried of introducing one or two half-crowns into the
churn, partly, I think, as a kind of charm, and partly with the idea
of what is called "cutting the curd." The remedy is certainly
sometimes successful, probably the coins set up a new movement in the
rotating cream, which causes an almost immediate appearance of the
butter. On the outside of the framework of the windows in some of
these old places, the word "dairy" or "cheese-room" may still be seen,
painted or incised. This is a survival from the days of the window
tax, and was necessary to claim the exemption which these rooms as
places of business enjoyed by law.

My former tutor, the late vicar of Old Basing in Hampshire, decided to
keep a cow on his glebe, and consulted the old parish clerk as to the
kind of cow he would recommend. The old man was the oracle of the
village on all matters secular as well as those connected with his
calling. "Well," he said, "what you wants is a nice pretty little cow,
not a great bi