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'Thee looks like a gurt malkin' is a common term of reproach among the poor folk meaning a bunch of rags on the end of a stick. We went out to look at the oven; and then Mrs. Luckett made me taste her black-currant gin, which was very good. Presently we went into the orchard to look at the first apple-tree out in bloom. While there a magpie flew across the meadow, and as I watched it Mrs.
The farmer who obliges them is invariably repaid with lucrative 'tips; but if he betrays those 'tips' may possibly find his information in turn untrustworthy, and have to sell by auction, and depart to Texas. Luckett avoids such pitfalls by the simple policy of 'squareness, which is, perhaps, the wisest of all.
The women, without the least excitement or surprise, quietly endeavoured to assist him up; and, as he resisted, one of them remarked in the driest matter-of-fact tone, 'Ourn be just like un as contrary as the wind. She alluded to her own husband. When I mentioned this incident afterwards to Mrs. Luckett, she said the troubles the cottage women underwent on account of the 'beer' were past belief.
Luckett, talking about cheese as we watched Cicely one morning, said people's taste have much altered; for she understood they were now fond of a foreign sort that was full of holes. The old saying was that bread should be full of holes, cheese should have none. Just then Hilary entered and completed the triad by adding that ale should make you see double.
Luckett, 'when the cat coughs, the cold goes through the house. Hilary, returning to the subject of the cheese, said that the best was made when the herd grazed on old pastures: there was a pasture field of his which it was believed had been grazed for fully two hundred years.
But so many labourers and labouring women were continually in and out of the kitchen at Lucketts' Place that I had an opportunity of gathering these items from Mrs. Luckett and Cicely.
Luckett was a man whom every one knew to be 'square; but, if the talk of the country-side is to be believed, the farmers who have much to do with the stables do not always come off successful. They sometimes become too sharp, and fancy themselves cleverer than a class of men who, if their stature be not great, are probably the keenest of wit.
Old Hilary Luckett though familiarly called 'old, he is physically in the prime of life is probably about the most independent man in the county. Yet he is on terms of more than goodwill with the great house, and rents one of the largest farms on the estate, somewhere between six and seven hundred acres.
Luckett chimed in here, and said that modern ways were not all improvements, the girls now were so fond of gadding about. This was a hint for Cicely, who loved a change, and yet was deeply attached to the old home. She rose at this, doubtless pouting, but it was too dusky to see, and went indoors, and presently from the open window came the notes of her piano.
If there was a dance within reach, black or white, it was all the same to "Andy," he was sure to be there. His boss, Mr. Selby, lectured him about his late hours, and to evade these lectures he often "turned in" with Handy Luckett, a steady old slave man, whose bed was in the loft of J. O. Rork's carriage house.
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