FORE:"That'll be all right," he said urbanely. "Of course I understand your feelings are more important to you than your cow. We'll do our best to meet you. What do you value them at, eh?"
CHAPTER III.So when Reuben came to his territory the next [Pg 44]afternoon he found a small crowd assembledDitch, Ginner, Realf of Grandturzel, Coalbran of Doozes, Pilcher of Birdseye, with a sprinkling of their wives, families, and farm-hands. He himself had brought Naomi, and Harry was to join them when he came back from an errand to Moor's Cottage. Reuben felt a trifle important and in need of spectators. This was to be the crowning act of conquest. When those roots were shattered away there would be nothing but time and manure between him and the best oat-crop in Peasmarsh.Then suddenly his manner quickened; a kind of exaltation came into his look, and he proudly jerked up his head:His mind painted him a picture it had never dared paint beforethe comfortable red house basking in sunshine, with a garden full of flowers, a cow or two at pasture in the meadow, the little hop-field his only tilthhis dear frail wife sitting in the porch, his children playing at her feet or reading at her kneeperhaps they were hers too, perhaps they were not. He saw himself contented, growing stout, wanting nothing he hadn't got, so having nothing he didn't want ... he was leaning over her chair, and gazing away into the southern distance where Boarzell lay against the sky, all patched with heather and thorns, all golden with gorse, unirrigated, uncultivated, without furrow or fence....His pride would not let him give way to his grief. He was not going to have any more of "Pity the poor old man." He mentioned William's decision almost casually at the Cocks. However, he need not have been afraid. "No more'n he desarves," was the universal comment ... "shameful the way he treated Grandturzel" ... "no feeling fur his own kin" ... "the young feller was wise not to come back." Indeed, locally the matter was looked upon as a case of poetic justice, and the rector's sermon on Sunday, treating of the wonderful sagacity of Providence, was taken, rightly or wrongly, to have a personal application.