ONE:At the same time he tantalised Reuben with vague hints of enthusiasm, sometimes almost making him think that, undependable and careless as he was, he had in him certain germs of understanding. But these were mere promises that were never fulfilled. Albert would whet Reuben's hopes by asking him questions about the country round: Why was such and such a farm called Stilliand's Tower or Puddingcake? Why were there about six places called Iden Green within a square of twenty miles? Was there any story to account for the names of Mockbeggar, Golden Compasses, Castweasel, or Gablehook? But directly Reuben digressed from these general questions to the holy particulars of Odiam and Boarzell, he would lose his interest and at last even his attention, escaping into some far-wandering dream.
TWO:"My wheat!wot d'you mean, sir?"
ONE:Reuben still dreamed of that Fair-place, and occasionally schemed as well; but everything short of the death of the Squireand his sonseemed useless. However, he now had the rest of Boarzell in such a state of cultivation that he sometimes found it possible to forget the land that was still unconquered. That year he bought a hay-elevator and a steam-reaper. The latter was the first in the neighbourhoodnever very go-ahead in agricultural mattersand quite a crowd collected when it started work in the Glotten Hide, to watch it mow down the grain, gather it into bundles, and crown the miracle by tying these just as neatly as, and much more quickly than, a man.
TWO:"If one of the boys had hurt his little finger you'd have doctor in at once. It's only because it's Fanny. You don't love her, you"
ONE:"Aye, aye, I seeit shall be doneshe returns no more to Winchcombe""This is most interesting," said Anne icily, raising her lorgnette and looking at Reuben as if he were a bad smell.
TWO:She felt as one whose memory calls and yet has nothing to remember, whose thoughts run to and fro and yet has nothing to think of, whose hopes pile themselves, and yet is hopeless, whose love cries out from the depths, and yet is loveless."Why, Master Calverley, to tell you the truth, that old mother Holgrave frightened me so that"
