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Henrietta thought not indeed when she looked over a gate leading into the farm-yard on the side opposite to the great old barn, raised on a multitude of stone posts, a short ladder reaching to the wide doors which were folded back so as to display the heaps of straw thrown violently back and forward; the dogs now standing in attitudes of ecstatic expectation, tail straight out, head bent forward, now springing in rapture on the prey; the boys rushing about with their huge sticks, and coming down now and then with thundering blows, the labourers with their white shirt sleeves and pitchforks pulling down the straw, Uncle Roger with a portentous-looking club in the thick of the fight.
Of course, Lord Fawn would say all manner of evil things of him, and would crow valiantly in his own farm-yard; but it would have been so much wiser on Lucy's part to have put up with the crowing, and to have disregarded altogether the words of a man so weak and insignificant! But the evil was done, and he must make some arrangement for poor Lucy's comfort.
Why did that one patch of Carex arenaria settle in the only square yard for miles and miles which bore sufficient resemblance to its native sandhill by the seashore, to make it comfortable? Why did Myosurus minimus, which I had hunted for in vain for fourteen years, appear by dozens in the fifteenth, upon a new-made bank, which had been for at least two hundred years a farm-yard gateway?
The new-comer had shown himself zealous and exact in all her little commissions, which were ever numerous, and he diligently overlooked the laborers. As noisy and insolent as I was quiet and forbearing, he was seen or rather heard at the plough, in the hay-loft, wood-house, stable, farm-yard, at the same instant.
At the same moment Tom and his companions reappeared from the stables where they had been securing their four-footed friends; and, after a few seconds, spent in running ramrods down the barrels to see that all was right, inspecting primings, knapping flints, or putting on fresh copper caps, it was announced that all was ready; and passing through the farm-yard, we entered, through a set of bars, a broad bright buckwheat stubble.
Nor should we overlook the effects of fires, the demolition of old buildings, and the removal of rubbish to the nearest vacant space, Abinger, Surrey. Late in the autumn of 1876, the ground in an old farm-yard at this place was dug to a depth of 2 to 2.5 feet, and the workmen found various ancient remains. This led Mr. T. H. Farrer of Abinger Hall to have an adjoining ploughed field searched.
During tea the family party were again alarmed by the cry of "Fire!" of which they could see the glare through the window; but, on hastening to the farm-yard, it proved to be only one of the smouldering heaps which had burst out again, and a few pails of water soon extinguished the flames.
The varied sounds of poultry were heard from the well-stocked farm-yard; the bees hummed from their hives in the garden; the cattle lowed in the rich meadow; while the crammed barns and ample stacks bore proof of an abundant harvest. The stranger opened the gate and advanced dubiously toward the house.
"I don't know," said Dick one day as he stood with his arms folded, leaning upon Solomon, talking to Tom Tallington and staring at Thorpeley the constable, who was leaning against a post smoking and staring with one eye at the fen, while with the other he watched the group of three in the Toft farm-yard. "Well, I'm sure I don't," said Tom. "He never goes over to the town to buy any."
In this guise he ambled forth over hill and valley, the admiration of every farm-yard which they passed in their progress, till, 'low down in a grassy vale, they found David Gellatley leading two very tall deer greyhounds, and presiding over half a dozen curs, and about as many bare-legged and bare-headed boys, who, to procure the chosen distinction of attending on the chase, had not failed to tickle his ears with the dulcet appellation of Maister Gellatley, though probably all and each had hooted him on former occasions in the character of daft Davie.
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