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"I hate your modern smartness!" Thorn, noting the hardness of her voice, stopped with an apologetic gesture and let her go. Winter had begun, and although the briars shone red along the hedgerows and the stunted oaks had not lost all their leaves, bitter sleet blew across the dale when Grace went up the muddy lonning to Mireside farm.
An hour or two afterwards Grace heard about the matter from the sick wife of a farmer, whom she had gone to see, and when she went home thought she had better not confess that she had taken Hayes' note to Mireside. When Osborn joined his wife and daughter at the tea-table in the hall after some disappointing shooting, his remarks about his tenants were rancorous.
One could reach Mireside by a rough moor-land road, but it went round the hills and there was a shorter way across the range. If he went round, he might arrive late for the reckoning and some of the lambs would get footsore and stop. On the other hand, he knew the fells and shrank from trying to find his way among the crags in the dark. It was, however, important that he should not be late.
It was the price they, the Osborns, had taken for a shabby deed, and for which poor people and hard-worked women paid. Grace knew about the extra dust that peat fires caused and how often the bread was spoiled. When she entered the library Osborn was studying some documents. He looked up impatiently, and she said, "I was at Mireside. Railton's no better and is much disturbed about his lease."
She threw a fresh light on matters the gossips already talked about; among others were Grace's visit to Mireside the morning Railton's sheep were counted and her meeting with Kit before he went to look for the Herdwicks. When she stopped Bell knitted his brows. "If it was used right, I might mak' some use o' this," he observed.
He came back to the table and picked up a cup of tea. Then, grumbling that it had gone cold, he put it down noisily and went out. Soon after the reckoning at Mireside, the snow melted off the fells and for a month dark rain clouds from the sea rolled up the dale.
It's weel you ken." "Then, can you give security for the debt?" "I canna and wadn't give it if I could. There's ways a cliver agent can run up a reckoning, and when you want Mireside I'll have to gan." "Then, I'm afraid we shall be forced to break the lease and take measures to recover the sum due." "Hoad on a minute!" said one of the group, who turned to Railton. "Would you like to stop?"
"You talk too much to the farmers. I don't like it. You know this." "Well," said Grace, "I think you ought not to break Railton's lease." "Why?" Grace hesitated. She began to see that Osborn could not be moved, but she had undertaken to plead Railton's cause. "He's an old man and has been at Mireside all his life. He has worked hard and always paid his rent.
The old china in the rack had been her mother's; she had brought it and the black oak meal-chest to Mireside thirty years since. The copper kettles and jelly-pan were wedding presents, and Tom, her son, who died in Australia, had sent the money to buy the sewing machine.
He was born at Mireside and his father took the farm from your grandfather, a very long time since. Then he's an old man and has not enough money to begin again at another place." "Ah," said Grace, "it would be very hard if he had to go! But if he hasn't money, he couldn't carry on, even if we renewed the lease."
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