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"What! not at all? never?" said Germain, falling to with a ploughman's appetite, but cutting off the best pieces to offer his companion, who obstinately refused them, and contented herself with a few chestnuts. "Tell me, little Marie," he continued, seeing that she did not propose to reply, "haven't you ever thought about marrying? you're old enough, though!"
In the days of King Arthur, Merlin, the most learned enchanter of his time, was on a journey; and, being very weary, stopped one day at the cottage of an honest ploughman to ask for refreshment. The ploughman's wife, with great civility, immediately brought him some milk in a wooden bowl, and some brown bread on a wooden platter.
Husbandmen's lore is profound, practical, poetic, superstitious, but it is singularly stagnant. The cycle of natural changes goes its perpetual round and the ploughman's mind, caught in that narrow vortex, plods and plods after the seasons. Apart from an occasional flood, drought, or pestilence, nothing breaks his laborious torpor.
Until the faded yellow garments which have done service for many predecessors are wrapped about it, the baby might be anybody's child a Duke's, or a ploughman's. But the livery of its unfortunate estate marks and stamps it at once and gives it the social caste and cachet it is doomed to wear.
Well, I I didn't mean to say that; but when you talk in that way about thin shoes, a woman says, of course, what she doesn't mean; she can't help it. You've always gone on about my shoes; when I think I'm the fittest judge of what becomes me best. I dare say, 'twould be all the same to you if I put on ploughman's boots; but I'm not going to make a figure of my feet, I can tell you.
In far fewer years than three thousand it may well fortune that a poor ploughman's blood may come up to a kingdom, and a king's right royal kin on the other hand fall down to the plough and cart, and neither that king know that ever he came from the cart, nor that carter know that ever he came from the crown.
Tom Bryan was a rough fellow, who ought to have been driving a plough; a ploughman's life was too peaceful an occupation for him a drover's life would have suited him best, prodding his cattle along the road with a goad; it was said that was how he maintained his authority in the parish. The remembrance of the day he bared his back to that fellow was still a bitter one.
Grumble; "what with Eben Wicket scarcely cold in his grave, and John a thief, with his neck broke and heaven only knows what else besides." Nevertheless, that summer Noel Ploughman's sober, honest face was often to be seen in Mrs. Wicket's garden patch, among the beans and the lettuces. Who can say what they found in one another to admire?
"I think so." "Husband come back?" "No." She bade her acquaintance goodbye for the respective carters had now come out from the inn and the two waggons resumed their journey in opposite directions; the vehicle whereon sat Marian, Izz, and the ploughman's family with whom they had thrown in their lot, being brightly painted, and drawn by three powerful horses with shining brass ornaments on their harness; while the waggon on which Mrs Durbeyfield and her family rode was a creaking erection that would scarcely bear the weight of the superincumbent load; one which had known no paint since it was made, and drawn by two horses only.
The king liked the notion well enough, and the fellow being very well acquainted with the country, puts on a ploughman's habit, and went away immediately with a long pole upon his shoulder. The horse lay all this while in the woods, and the king stood undiscerned by the enemy on the little hill aforesaid.
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