with his eyes
upturned to the straw knobs imitative of golden globes at the summits of the
beehive ricks, which indeed were gold of the best sort, you might have imagined
him to be engaged in some pagan act of adoration. Kester was an old bachelor,
and reputed to have stockings full of coin, concerning which his master cracked
a joke with him every pay-night: not a new, unseasoned joke, but a good old one,
that had been tried many times before, and had worn well. »Th' young measter's a
merry mon,« Kester frequently remarked; for having begun his career by
frightening away the crows under the last Martin Poyser but one, he could never
cease to account the reigning Martin a young master. I am not ashamed of
commemorating old Kester: you and I are indebted to the hard hands of such men -
hands that have long ago mingled with the soil they tilled so faithfully,
thriftily making the best they could of the earth's fruits, and receiving the
smallest share as their own wages.
    Then, at the end of the table, opposite his master, there was Alick, the
shepherd and head man, with the ruddy face and broad shoulders, not on the best
terms with old Kester; indeed, their intercourse was confined to an occasional
snarl, for though they probably differed little concerning hedging and ditching
and the treatment of ewes, there was a profound difference of opinion between
them as to their own respective merits. When Tityrus and Meliboeus happen to be
on the same farm, they are not sentimentally polite to each other. Alick,
indeed, was not by any means a honeyed man: his speech had usually something of
a snarl in it, and his broad-shouldered aspect something of the bull-dog
expression - »Don't you meddle with me, and I won't meddle with you;« but he was
honest even to the splitting of an oat-grain rather than he would take beyond
his acknowledged share, and as »close-fisted« with his master's property as if
it had been his own, - throwing very small handfuls of damaged barley to the
chickens, because a large handful affected his imagination painfully with a
sense of profusion. Good-tempered Tim, the waggoner, who loved his horses, had
his grudge against Alick in the matter of corn: they rarely spoke to each other,
and never looked at each other, even over their dish of cold potatoes; but then,
as this was their usual mode of behaviour towards all mankind, it would be