ONE:These tricks were never unkind, for David and William were the most benevolent little boys. They saw life through a golden mist, it smelt of milk and apples, it was full of soft lowings and bleatings and cheepings, of gentle noses to stroke and little downy things to hold. For the first time since it became Reuben's, Odiam made children happy. The farm which had been a galley and a prison to those before them, was an enchanted land of adventure to these two. Old Beatup, who remembered earlier things, would sometimes smile when he saw them trotting hand in hand about the yard, playing long hours in the orchard, and now and then[Pg 385] pleading as a special favour to be allowed to feed the chickens, or help fetch the cows home. He seemed to see the farm peopled by little ghosts who had never dared trot about aimlessly, or had time to play, and had fed the fowls and fetched the cows not as a treat and an adventure, but as a dreary part of the day's grind ... he reflected that "the m?aster had learned summat by the others, surelye."
FORE:The monk, for the first time, fully raised his eyes, and casting upon the baron a momentary glance of reproach, turned, without speaking, from the table. He walked on a few steps towards the door, and then stopping suddenly, as if recollecting that Calverley had orders to see him depart, he turned round, and looking upon the squire, who was almost at his side, he said in a stern voice, and with a frowning brow, "I go in obedience to your master; but even obedience to your master is not to be enforced upon a servant of the Lord by such as you. Of my own will I go forth; but not one step further do I proceed till you retire!"
FORE:"Not a word," replied Wells, breaking from the foreman's hold, and effecting a precipitate retreat.
FORE:Tilly was frightened.He was right. Realf accepted his offer, partly persuaded by Tilly. His mortgage foreclosed in a couple of months, and he had no hopes of renewing it. If he rejected Reuben's terms, he would probably soon find himself worse off than everhis farm gone with nothing to show for it, and himself a penniless exile. On the other hand, his position as bailiff, though ignominious, would at least leave him Grandturzel as his home and a certain share in its management. He might be able to save some money, and perhaps at last buy a small place of his own, and start afresh.... He primed himself with such ideas to help drug his pride. After all, he could not sacrifice his wife and children to make a holiday for his self-respect. Tilly was past her prime, and not able for much hard work, and though his eldest boys had enlisted, like Reuben's, and were thus no longer on his mind, he had two marriageable girls at home besides his youngest boy of ten. One's wife and children were more to one than one's farm or one's position as a farmerand if they were not, they ought to be.
