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Mr Darvell's mouth was still occupied, not with his pipe, but with a thick hunk of bread, on which was laid an almost equally thick piece of fat bacon. Gazing at his wife across this barrier he nodded again, and presently murmured somewhat indistinctly: "Ah, he came home with me." "Then," repeated Mrs Darvell, fixing her eyes sharply on him, "where is the lad?" Mr Darvell avoided his wife's gaze.
I'm Frank Darvell's lad, what lives at Green Highlands. And Parson knows me and Schoolmaster. And I've niver stolen nowt in my life. Don't ye let 'em lock me up!" "A likely story!" growled Andrew. "Honest lads don't go trampin' round with thieves."
On the next morning they were both out early at Darvell's farm, surrounded by bricklayers and carpenters, and before the week was over the work was in progress. Poor Darvell, half elated and half troubled, knew but little of the cause of this new vehemence. Something we suppose he did know, for the news was soon spread over the estate that the Squire had bought out Mr.
Therefore, to Ralph's own regret, the two horses had on this morning been sent on to Barford Heath. The Squire was not kept waiting a moment. Ralph lit his cigar and jumped in, and the Squire started in all comfort and joy. The road led them by Darvell's farm, and for a moment the carriage was stopped that a word might be spoken to some workman. "You'd better have a couple more men, Miles.
On one of the settles in the chimney-corner sat Mrs Darvell's "man," as she called her husband, smoking a short pipe, with his feet stretched out on the hearth; his great boots, caked with mud, stood beside him.
The vicar nodded his head slowly, as though Darvell's conduct was not quite incomprehensible under such circumstances, and Mrs Darvell continued in a lower tone: "You know, sir, it wur because my man lifted his hand to Frank that the lad went off; and I don't seem as how I can forget it.
He shrank from the hard words or the uplifted hand with an evident fear, which only strengthened Mr Darvell's anger, for it mortified him still more to find his lad a coward as well as a bungler over his work. Frank, on his side, found his life almost intolerable just now, and all his trembling efforts "to work like a man" seemed utterly useless, for he was crippled by fear as well as weakness.
A good name's a precious thing, and like all precious things it's got by trouble and labour. It's the best thing a father can hand down to his son. When he begins life, men say, `He's Frank Darvell's son, he comes of a good stock; and so the `good name' his father earned is of great use to him.
They were standing together leaning upon a gate, and looking at the exhumation of certain vast roots, as to which the trees once belonging to them had been made to fall in consequence of the improvements going on at Darvell's farm. "I don't mind telling you," said Ralph the heir, "that I hope soon to have a mistress here." "And who is she?" "That would be mere telling; would it not?"
He was a big broad-shouldered fellow, about forty, with a fair smooth face, which generally looked good-tempered enough, and somewhat foolish, but which just now had a sullen expression on it, which Mrs Darvell's quick eye noted immediately. He looked up and nodded when his wife came in, without taking the pipe out of his mouth.
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