While there a magpie flew across the meadow, and as I watched it Mrs.
Luckett advised me to turn my back and not to look too long in that direction.

'For,' said she, 'one magpie is good luck, but two mean sorrow; and if you should see three--goodness!--something awful might happen.'[1] [1] See Notes.
One lovely June afternoon as Hilary and I strolled about the fields, we passed some lambs at play.

'Lamb is never good eating without sunshine,' said Hilary.

Not only wheat and plants generally but animals also are affected by the absence of sun, so that the epicure should hope as devoutly as the farmer that the dull and overcast season of 1879 will not be repeated.

Hilary's remark was founded upon the experience of long years--such experience as is only to be found in farmhouses where kindred succeed each other, and hand down practical observations from father to son.
The thistles were showing rather strongly in the barley--the result of last year's rain and the consequent impossibility of proper clearing.
These thistles he thought came from portions of the root and not from seed.