Country life is, above all, steeped in common sense--the old,
ancestral, simple wisdom of primitive men. And Elizabeth, in spite
of her classical degree, and her passion for Greek pots, believed
herself to be, before everything, a person of common sense. She had
always managed her own family's affairs. She had also been the paid
secretary of an important learned society in her twenties not long
after she left college, and knew well that she had been a
conspicuous success. She had a great love, indeed, for any sort of
organizing, large and small, for putting things straight, and
running them. She was burning to put Mannering straight--and run it.
She knew she could. Organizing means not doing things yourself, but
finding the right people to do them. And she had always been good
at finding the right people--putting the round pegs into the round
holes.
All very well, however, to talk of running the Squire's estate! What
was to be done with the Squire?
Take the codicil business. First thing that morning he had sent her
to that very drawer to look for something, and there lay the
precious document--unsigned and unwitnessed--for any one to see.
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