Honest! He is a horse-couper.' 'Right, right,' I replied; 'I know it--I have heard of your father-as honest as any horse-couper of them all.

Why, Dorcas, I mean to buy a horse of him.' 'Ah, your honour,' sighed Dorcas, 'he is the man to serve your honour well--if ever you should get round again--or thof you were a bit off the hooks, he would no more cheat you than'-- 'Well, well, we will deal, my girl, you may depend on't.

But tell me now, were I to give you a letter, what would you do to get it forward ?' 'Why, put it into Squire's own bag that hangs in hall,' answered poor Dorcas.

'What else could I do?
He sends it to Brampton, or to Carloisle, or where it pleases him, once a week, and that gate.' 'Ah!' said I; 'and I suppose your sweetheart John carries it ?' 'Noa--disn't now--and Jan is no sweetheart of mine, ever since he danced at his mother's feast with Kitty Rutlege, and let me sit still; that a did.' 'It was most abominable in Jan, and what I could never have thought of him,' I replied.
'Oh, but a did though--a let me sit still on my seat, a did.' 'Well, well, my pretty May, you will get a handsomer fellow than Jan--Jan's not the fellow for you, I see that.' 'Noa, noa,' answered the damsel; 'but he is weel aneugh for a' that, mon.

But I carena a button for him; for there is the miller's son, that suitored me last Appleby Fair, when I went wi' oncle, is a gway canny lad as you will see in the sunshine.' 'Aye, a fine stout fellow.