"Well, it must be so," returned Captain Carbonel, "but I hate the idea of makeshifts and having imperfections concealed."
"Just like you, Edmund," laughed Dora. "You will always seem to be looking right through at the upright sprays, though all the solid weight of Hume, Gibbon, and Rollin is in front of them."
"Precisely," said Edmund. "It is not well to feel that there is anything to be hidden. The chief part of the vexation is, however," he added-shutting the door and lowering his voice-"that I am convinced that there must have been foul play somewhere."
"Oh, Edmund; French measure!"
"Nonsense! That does not account for at least a whole piece disappearing."
He took out a pencil, and went again into his calculations, while his sister-in-law indignantly exclaimed-
"It is all prejudice, because that horrid attorney said all these poor people were a bad lot."
"Hush, hush!" said Mrs Carbonel, rather frightened, and-
"I advise you to think before you speak," said Captain Carbonel quietly but sternly.
Still Dora could not help saying, as soon as she was alone with her sister, "I shall believe in the French measure. I like that slow, dull man, and I am sure he is honest."
"Yes, dear, only pray don't say any more to Edmund, but let us get the book-case placed as fast as we can, and let him forget all about it."
CHAPTER TWO. THE LIE OF THE LAND.
"Thank you, pretty cow, that gave
Pleasant milk to soak my bread,
Every day and every night
Warm and fresh, and sweet and bright."
J. Taylor.
Darkness had descended before there had been time to do more than shake into the downstair rooms and bedrooms and be refreshed with the evening meal, but with morning began the survey of the new home.
The front part of the house had three living rooms, with large sash windows, almost to the ground, shaded by the verandah. These were drawing-room, dining-room, and study, the last taken out of the entry, where was the staircase, and there were three similar rooms above. These had been added by the late owner to the original farmhouse, with a fine old-fashioned kitchen that sent Mary and Dora into greater raptures than their cook. There were offices around, a cool dairy, where stood great red glazed pans of delicious-looking cream and milk, and a clean white wooden churn that Dora longed to handle. The farmhouse rooms were between it and the new ones, and there were a good many rooms above, the red-tiled roof rising much higher than that of the more modern part of the house. There was a narrow paling in front, and then came the farmyard, enclosed in barns, cow-houses and cart-sheds, and a cottage where the bailiff, Master Pucklechurch, had taken up his abode, having hitherto lived in the farmhouse. He was waiting to show Captain Carbonel over the farm. He was a grizzled, stooping old fellow, with a fine, handsome, sunburnt face; bright, shrewd, dark eyes looking out between puckers, a short white smock-frock, and long gaiters. It was not their notion of a bailiff but the lawyer, who was so chary of his praise, had said that old Master Pucklechurch and his wife were absolutely trustworthy. They had managed the farm in the interregnum, and brought him weekly accounts in their heads, for neither could write, with the most perfect regularity and minuteness. And his face did indeed bespeak confidence in his honesty, as he touched his hat in answer to the greeting.
The ladies, however, looked and smelt in some dismay, for the centre of the yard was a mountain of manure and straw, with a puce-coloured pond beside it. On the summit of the mountain a handsome ruddy cock, with a splendid dark-green arched tail, clucked, chuckled, and scratched for his speckled, rose-crowned hens, a green-headed, curly-tailed drake "steered forth his fleet upon the lake" of brown ducks and their yellow progeny, and pigs of the plum-pudding order rooted in the intermediate regions. The road which led to the cart-sheds and to the house, skirted round this unsavoury tract.
"Oh, Edmund!" sighed Mary.
"Farmer's wife, Mary," said her husband, smiling. "It ought to be a perfect nosegay to you."
"I'm sure it is not wholesome," she said, looking really distressed, and he dropped his teasing tone, and said-
"Of course it shall be remedied! I will see to it."
A dismal screeching and cackling here attracted the attention of the sisters, who started towards Pucklechurch's cottage, and the fowl-house, (a very foul house by the by) in front of which, on a low wooden stool, sat a tidy old woman, Betty Pucklechurch in fact, in a tall muslin cap, spotted kerchief blue gown, and coarse apron, with a big girl before her holding the unfortunate hen, whose cries had startled them.
"Oh, don't go near! She is killing it," cried Dora.
"No;" as the hen, with a final squawk, shook out her ruffled feathers, and rushed away to tell her woes to her companions on the dunghill, while the old woman jumped up, smoothed down her apron, and curtsied low.
"What were you doing?" asked Mary, still startled.
"Only whipping her breast with nettles, ma'am, to teach her to sit close in her nest, the plaguey thing, and not be gadding after the rest."
"Poor thing!" cried Dora. "But oh, look, look, Mary, at the dear little chickens!"
They were in the greatest delight at the three broods of downy little chickens, and one of ducklings, whose parent hens were clucking in coops; and in the kitchen they found a sickly one nursed in flannel in a basket, and an orphaned lamb which staggered upon its disproportionate black legs at sight of Betty.
"Ay! he be always after me," she said. "They terrify one terrible, as if 'twas their mother, till they can run with the rest."
Dora would have petted the lamb, but it retreated from her, behind Betty's petticoats, and she could only listen to Mary's questions about how much butter was made from how many cows milk, and then be taken to see the two calves, one of which Betty pronounced to be "but a staggering Bob yet, but George Butcher would take he in a sen'night," which sounded so like senate, that it set Dora wondering what council was to pronounce on the fate of the poor infant bull.
Over his stall, Edmund found them, after an inspection of the pig-styes, and having much offended Master Pucklechurch by declaring that he would have them kept clean, and the pigs no longer allowed to range about the yard.
"Bless you, sir, the poor things would catch their death of cold and die," was the answer to the one edict; and to the other, "They'd never take to their victuals, nor fat kindly without their range first."
"Then let them have it in the home-field out there, where I see plenty of geese."
"They'll spile every bit of grass, sir," was the growling objection; and still worse was the suggestion, which gradually rose into a command, that the "muck-heap" should be removed to the said home-field, and never allowed to accumulate in such close proximity to the house.
Pucklechurch said little; but his "If it be your will, sir," sounded like a snarl, and after ruminating for some time, he brought out-as if it were an answer to a question about the team of horses-
"We'll have to take on another boy, let be a man, if things is to be a that 'en a."
"Let us, then," said the captain, and joined his ladies, with the old man depressed and grumbling inwardly.
There was an orchard preparing to be beautiful with blossom, and a considerable kitchen garden at the back and on the other side of the house, bounded by an exceedingly dirty and be-rutted farm road, over which the carriage had jolted the evening before. The extensive home-field in front was shut off from the approach by a belt of evergreens, and sloped slightly upwards towards the hill which gave the parish its name.
"We will cut off a nice carriage road," said Mary, as she looked at it.
"All in good time," replied her husband, not wishing further to shock poor Master Pucklechurch, who had to conduct the party to the arable fields-one of which was being ploughed by three fine sleek horses, led by Bill Morris, with his father at the shafts. In another, their approach was greeted by hideous yells and shouts which made Dora start.