!"

It was always cheering in February, "fill dyke, be it black or be it
white," on a dark morning, to hear the young lambs and their mothers
calling to each other in the orchards, where there is some grass all
the year round under the shelter of the apple trees; or when a
springlike morning appears, about the time of St. Valentine's Day, and
the thrushes are singing love-songs to their mates, and the first
brimstone butterfly has dared to leave his winter seclusion for the
fickle sunshine, to realize that Spring is coming, and the active work
of the farm is about to recommence. There is a superstition that when
the master sees the firstling of the flock, if its head is turned
towards him, good luck for the year will follow, but it is most
unlucky if its head is turned away.

After the disastrous wet season of 1879 immense losses ensued from the
prevalence of the fatal liver rot; many thousands of sheep were sold
at the auctions for 3s. or 4s. apiece, and sound mutton was
exceedingly scarce and dear. It was represented to a very August
personage, that if the people could be induced to forgo the
consumption of lamb, these in due course would grow into sheep, and
the price of mutton would be reduced. Accordingly an order was issued
forbidding the appearance of lamb on the Court tables. It had not
occurred to the proposer of this scheme that a scarcity of food for
the developing lambs would result, nor was it understood that the
producers of fat lambs make special cropping arrangements for their
keep, with the object of clearing out their stock about Easter, in
time to plough the ground, and follow the roots where the ewes and
lambs have been feeding, with barley. The "classes" copied the example
of the Court, as in duty bound, and the demand fell to zero. But the
lambs had to be sold for the reasons mentioned, and, in the absence of
the usual demand, the unfortunate producers offered them at almost any
price. The miners and the pottery workers in Staffordshire were not so
loyal as the "classes"; they welcomed the unusual opportunity of
buying early lamb at 9d. a pound, and trains composed entirely of
trucks full of lambs from the south of England to the Midlands
supplied them abundantly.

The edict, when its effect was apparent, was therefore revoked, but it
was too late, the lambs were gone, and as everybody was hungry for his
usual Easter lamb, the demand was immense, and the price rose in
proportion. I had thirty o