On Friday evening, when work was done, the men trooped up to the farmhouse for their wages. These were handed out of a window to them by the farmer himself and acknowledged by a rustic scraping of feet and pulling of forelocks. The farmer had grown too old and too stout to ride horseback, and, although he still made the circuit of his land in his high dogcart every day, he had to keep to the roads, and pay-day was the only time he saw many of his men. Then, if there was cause for complaint, was the time they heard of it. “You, there! What were you up to in Causey Spinney last Monday, when you were supposed to be clearing the runnels?” was a type of complaint that could always be countered by pleading. “Call o’ Nature, please, sir.” Less frequent and harder to answer was: “I hear you’ve not been too smart about your work lately, Stimson. ‘Twon’t do, you know, ‘twon’t do! You’ve got to earn your money if you’re going to stay here.” But, just as often, it would be: “There, Boamer, there you are, my lad, a bright and shining golden half-sovereign for you. Take care you don’t go spending it all at once!” or an inquiry about some wife in childbed or one of the ancients’ rheumatism. He could afford to be jolly and affable: he paid poor old Monday Morning to do his dirty work for him.

Apart from that, he was not a bad-hearted man and had no idea he was sweating his labourers. Did they not get the full standard wage, with no deduction for standing by in bad weather? How they managed to live and keep their families on such a sum was their own affair. After all, they did not need much, they were not used to luxuries. He liked a cut off a juicy sirloin and a glass of good port himself; but bacon and beans were better to work on. “Hard liver, hard worker” was a sound old country maxim, and the labouring man did well to follow it. Besides, was there not at least one good blowout for everybody once a year at his harvest-home dinner, and the joint of beef at Christmas, when he killed a beast and distributed the meat, and soup and milk-puddings for anybody who was ill; they had only to ask for and fetch them.

He never interfered with his men as long as they did their work well. Not he! He was a staunch Conservative himself, a true blue, and they knew his colour when they went to vote; but he never tried to influence them at election times and never inquired afterwards which way they had voted. Some masters did it, he knew, but it was a dirty, low-down trick, in his opinion. As to getting them to go to church—that was the parson’s job.