Distant lines of hills were pretty; and there was a healthful breeziness about the situation; but Mrs. Brutt's description of it as "the loveliest spot imaginable" was overdrawn, as her descriptions were wont to be.
Apart from the group of farm buildings stood the dwelling-house, with lattice windows and creeper-grown porch. The grunting of pigs alternated with cawings from a rookery not far off. Mr. Stirling, a fine-looking man on horseback, noted neither, his mind being otherwise engaged.
Somebody came striding through the gate; older by many years than the Squire; bigger and broader; roughly clad, with gaiters and heavy boots. His face, red-brown like a Ribstone pippin, was lighted by the bluest of eyes; his hands, large and muscular, were unused to gloves; his bearing, though blunt and unpolished, was respectful. Yeoman farmer, every inch of him, as Mrs. Brutt had said. For once she had spoken correctly. He smiled at sight of the Squire.
"Fine weather, sir. Good for the crops."
"How are you, Mr. Paine?"
"I'm right enough, sir. I've nought to complain of. And having my niece and her girls here, it do make a lot of difference to me."
"No doubt!"—with a touch of curtness.
"Yes, sir,—a lot of difference it do make. The place was that lonesome with her gone." He had lost his wife some months earlier, and he pushed his cap back with a reverent gesture. "I just put it so to Molly when I wrote; and she wouldn't say 'No,'—bless her!—though it did mean giving up of her Norfolk home. I'd hardly have known Molly, that I wouldn't—she's that changed from the pretty girl she used to be."
"People generally do alter as they grow older." The Squire spoke in a constrained tone.
"Ay, sir,—'tis true. But she's more changed than I'd have thought possible. Twenty-seven years it is now since she went to furrin parts with little Miss Katherine and her father,—and she was a right-down pretty creature, and no mistake, was our Molly. And if so be, as folks said, that she saved little Miss Katherine's life, sir, I'm glad it was so. All the same, it did go agin the grain with me—uncommon agin the grain it went!—Molly getting herself trained for a nurse, when this might have been her home all along. And then going off as she did, all of a suddent, to Canada, without ever seeing of us agen. I misdoubt but Phil Morris wasn't the best of husbands. She's seen a lot of trouble, she has—judgin' from her look."