After the death of an old miser, who, according
to the tale she had heard in a neighbouring village, had lived there
for forty years, with a decrepit wife, both of them horribly
neglected and dirty, and making latterly no attempt to work the
farm, a new tenant had appeared who would have taken the place, if
the Squire would have rebuilt the house and steadings, and allowed a
reasonable sum for the cleansing and recovering of the land. But
the Squire would do nothing of the kind. He 'hadn't a farthing to
spend on expensive repairs,' and if the new tenant wouldn't take the
farm on the old terms, well, he might leave it alone.
The place had just been investigated by the County Committee, and a
peremptory order had been issued. What was the Squire going to do?
Elizabeth fell to thinking what _ought_ to be done with the Squire's
twelve thousand acres, if the Squire were a reasonable man. It was
exasperating to her practical sense to see a piece of business in
such a muddle. As a child and growing girl she had spent long
summers in the country with a Dorsetshire uncle who farmed his own
land, and there had sprung up in her an instinctive sympathy with
the rich old earth and its kindly powers, with the animals and the
crops, with the labourers and their rural arts, with all the
interwoven country life, and its deep rooting in the soil of history
and poetry.
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