"
"I says," said the next speaker, a poor fellow whose sentences were
continually broken by a hacking cough, "just what he said. If they can't
till the land, let them do it as can. But they won't; they won't let us
have a scrap on it, though we'd pay 'em more for it nor ever they'd make
for themselves. But they says it 'ud make us too independent, if we had an
acre or so o' land; and so it 'ud for they. And so I says as he did--they
want to make slaves on us altogether, just to get the flesh and bones off
us at their own price. Look you at this here down.--If I had an acre on it,
to make a garden on, I'd live well with my wages, off and on. Why, if this
here was in garden, it 'ud be worth twenty, forty times o' that it be now.
And last spring I lays out o' work from Christmas till barley-sowing, and
I goes to the farmer and axes for a bit o' land to dig and plant a few
potatoes--and he says, 'You be d--d! If you're minding your garden after
hours, you'll not be fit to do a proper day's work for me in hours--and I
shall want you by-and-by, when the weather breaks'--for it was frost most
bitter, it was.
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