Part 10

They passed slowly from one bracken-dotted field to the next--flushed with pride of ownership, plotting alterations and restorations at each turn; halting in their tracks to argue, spreading apart to embrace two views at once, or closing in to consider one. Couples moved out of their way, but smiling covertly.

“We shall make some bad breaks,” he said at last.

“Together, though. You won't let anyone else in, will you?”

“Except the contractors. This syndicate handles this proposition by its little lone.”

“But you might feel the want of some one,” she insisted.

“I shall--but it will be you. It's business, Sophie, but it's going to be good fun.”

“Please God,” she answered flushing, and cried to herself as they went back to tea. “It's worth it. Oh, it's worth it.”

The repairing and moving into Friars Pardon was business of the most varied and searching, but all done English fashion, without friction. Time and money alone were asked. The rest lay in the hands of beneficent advisers from London, or spirits, male and female, called up by Mr. and Mrs. Cloke from the wastes of the farms. In the centre stood George and Sophie, a little aghast, their interests reaching out on every side.

“I ain't sayin' anything against Londoners,” said Cloke, self-appointed clerk of the outer works, consulting engineer, head of the immigration bureau, and superintendent of woods and forests; “but your own people won't go about to make more than a fair profit out of you.”

“How is one to know?” said George.

“Five years from now, or so on, maybe, you'll be lookin' over your first year's accounts, and, knowin' what you'll know then, you'll say: 'Well, Billy Beartup'--or Old Cloke as it might be--'did me proper when I was new.' No man likes to have that sort of thing laid up against him.”

“I think I see,” said George. “But five years is a long time to look ahead.”

“I doubt if that oak Billy Beartup throwed in Reuben's Ghyll will be fit for her drawin’-room floor in less than seven,” Cloke drawled.

“Yes, that's my work,” said Sophie. (Billy Beartup of Griffons, a woodman by training and birth, a tenant farmer by misfortune of marriage, had laid his broad axe at her feet a month before.) “Sorry if I've committed you to another eternity.”

“And we shan't even know where we've gone wrong with your new carriage drive before that time either,” said Cloke, ever anxious to keep the balance true with an ounce or two in Sophie's favour. The past four months had taught George better than to reply. The carriage road winding up the hill was his present keen interest. They set off to look at it, and the imported American scraper which had blighted the none too sunny soul of “Skim” Winsh, the carter.

But young Iggulden was in charge now, and under his guidance, Buller and Roberts, the great horses, moved mountains.

“You lif' her like that, an' you tip her like that,” he explained to the gang. “My uncle he was roadmaster in Connecticut.”

“Are they roads yonder?” said Skim, sitting under the laurels.

“No better than accommodation roads. Dirt, they call 'em. They'd suit you, Skim.”

“Why?” said the incautious Skim.

“Cause you'd take no hurt when you fall out of your cart drunk on a Saturday,” was the answer.

“I didn't last time neither,” Skim roared.

After the loud laugh, old Whybarne of Gale Anstey piped feebly, “Well, dirt or no dirt, there's no denyin' Chapin knows a good job when he sees it. 'E don't build one day and dee-stroy the next, like that nigger Sangres.”

“SHE's the one that knows her own mind,” said Pinky, brother to Skim Winsh, and a Napoleon among carters who had helped to bring the grand piano across the fields in the autumn rains.

“She had ought to,” said Iggulden. “Whoa, Buller! She's a Lashmar. They never was double-thinking.”

“Oh, you found that? Has the answer come from your uncle?” said Skim, doubtful whether so remote a land as America had posts.

The others looked at him scornfully. Skim was always a day behind the fair. Iggulden rested from his labours. “She's a Lashmar right enough. I started up to write to my uncle--at once--the month after she said her folks came from Veering Holler.”

“Where there ain't any roads?” Skim interrupted, but none laughed.