Tom excepted, Martin Poyser had some pride in his servants and labourers, thinking with satisfaction that they were the best worth their pay of any set on the estate.  There was Kester Bale, for example (Beale, probably, if the truth were known, but he was called Bale, and was not conscious of any claim to a fifth letter), the old man with the close leather cap and the network of wrinkles on his sun-browned face.  Was there any man in Loamshire who knew better the “natur” of all farming work?  He was one of those invaluable labourers who can not only turn their hand to everything, but excel in everything they turn their hand to.  It is true Kester’s knees were much bent outward by this time, and he walked with a perpetual curtsy, as if he were among the most reverent of men.  And so he was; but I am obliged to admit that the object of his reverence was his own skill, towards which he performed some rather affecting acts of worship.  He always thatched the ricks—­for if anything were his forte more than another, it was thatching—­and when the last touch had been put to the last beehive rick, Kester, whose home lay at some distance from the farm, would take a walk to the rick-yard in his best clothes on a Sunday morning and stand in the lane, at a due distance, to contemplate his own thatching walking about to get each rick from the proper point of view.  As he curtsied along, with his eyes upturned to the straw knobs imitative of golden globes at the summits of the beehive ricks, which indeed were gold of the best sort, you might have imagined him to be engaged in some pagan act of adoration.  Kester was an old bachelor and reputed to have stockings full of coin, concerning which his master cracked a joke with him every pay-night:  not a new unseasoned joke, but a good old one, that had been tried many times before and had worn well.  “Th’ young measter’s a merry mon,” Kester frequently remarked; for having begun his career by frightening away the crows under the last Martin Poyser but one, he could never cease to account the reigning Martin a young master.  I am not ashamed of commemorating old Kester.  You and I are indebted to the hard hands of such men—­hands that have long ago mingled with the soil they tilled so faithfully, thriftily making the best they could of the earth’s fruits, and receiving the smallest share as their own wages.

Then, at the end of the table, opposite his master, there was Alick, the shepherd and head-man, with the ruddy face and broad shoulders, not on the best terms with old Kester; indeed, their intercourse was confined to an occasional snarl, for though they probably differed little concerning hedging and ditching and the treatment of ewes, there was a profound difference of opinion between them as to their own respective merits.  When Tityrus and Meliboeus happen to be on the same farm, they are not sentimentally polite to each other.  Alick, indeed, was not by any means a honeyed man.  His speech had usually something of a snarl in it,