North and South
Page 294'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
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
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.
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.