'Aye!' said Mrs. Purkis, smoothing down the bed, and despatching

Jenny for an armful of lavender-scented towels, 'times is

changed, miss; our new Vicar has seven children, and is building

a nursery ready for more, just out where the arbour and

tool-house used to be in old times. And he has had new grates put

in, and a plate-glass window in the drawing-room. He and his wife

are stirring people, and have done a deal of good; at least they

say it's doing good; if it were not, I should call it turning

things upside down for very little purpose. The new Vicar is a

teetotaller, miss, and a magistrate, and his wife has a deal of

receipts for economical cooking, and is for making bread without

yeast; and they both talk so much, and both at a time, that they

knock one down as it were, and it's not till they're gone, and

one's a little at peace, that one can think that there were

things one might have said on one's own side of the question.

He'll be after the men's cans in the hay-field, and peeping in;

and then there'll be an ado because it's not ginger beer, but I

can't help it. My mother and my grandmother before me sent good

malt liquor to haymakers; and took salts and senna when anything

ailed them; and I must e'en go on in their ways, though Mrs.

Hepworth does want to give me comfits instead of medicine, which,

as she says, is a deal pleasanter, only I've no faith in it. But

I must go, miss, though I'm wanting to hear many a thing; I'll

come back to you before long.

Mr. Bell had strawberries and cream, a loaf of brown bread, and a

jug of milk, (together with a Stilton cheese and a bottle of port

for his own private refreshment,) ready for Margaret on her

coming down stairs; and after this rustic luncheon they set out

to walk, hardly knowing in what direction to turn, so many old

familiar inducements were there in each.

'Shall we go past the vicarage?' asked Mr. Bell.

'No, not yet. We will go this way, and make a round so as to come

back by it,' replied Margaret.

Here and there old trees had been felled the autumn before; or a

squatter's roughly-built and decaying cottage had disappeared.

Margaret missed them each and all, and grieved over them like old

friends. They came past the spot where she and Mr. Lennox had

sketched. The white, lightning-scarred trunk of the venerable

beech, among whose roots they had sate down was there no more;

the old man, the inhabitant of the ruinous cottage, was dead; the

cottage had been pulled down, and a new one, tidy and

respectable, had been built in its stead. There was a small

garden on the place where the beech-tree had been.




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