"Oh, I've done very well," laughed the young man; "but it'll be best I should go over there now. It's only a step for me to get here of mornings."
"Well, I'm glad of that at any rate," said mother. "Father's quite right. It wasn't fitting for you as our bailiff not to have a proper place. And now you'll have it. Meg, you and I must go up and see as everything's comfortable. And we must get a woman in the place to see after him. Old Dorcas's niece might do. She's a widow—she'd want to take her youngest with her, but you wouldn't mind that," added she, turning again to Harrod. Her mind was full of the matter now. So was mine. We were quite at one upon it, and discussed it the whole evening. Nevertheless, I found time to wonder now and then how it was that it was only after his talk with Mr. Hoad that father had made up his mind to take on "The Elms." It rather nettled me. Mr. Hoad could not possibly know as much about farming as did Trayton Harrod.
However, the thing was done, that was the main thing. Mr. Harrod had had his way, and I tried to flatter myself that I was in some way instrumental in procuring it.
CHAPTER XX.
The time was coming near when Joyce was to come home, and I had done positively nothing in the matter in which I had promised to fight her battle. It is true that she had begged me not to fight her battle, but I wanted to fight it, and I was vexed with myself that I had so allowed the matter to slide. In the one tussle that I had had with mother, I had been so worsted that I felt, with mortification, my later silence must look like a confession of defeat.
The fact is that I had been thinking of other things. Trayton Harrod and I had had a great many things to think of. He had started a new scheme for the laying on of water.
Our village abounded in wells; they, too, were the remnants of the affluence of the town in by-gone days, but they were all at the foot of the hill.
Trayton Harrod wanted to bring the water from the spring at the top of Croft's hill, in pipes through the valley, and up our own hill again. He wanted to form a co-operation among the inhabitants for the enterprise. If this was impossible, he wanted father to do it as a private undertaking, and to repay himself by charging a rental to those people who would have it brought to their houses. But he met with opposition at every turn. The inhabitants of Marshlands were a stubborn lot; they did not believe in the possibility of the thing; they did not care for innovations; they had done very well all these years with carts that brought the water up the hill and stored it in wells in their gardens, and why not now? He had not gained his point yet, either in one way or in the other, and I had been very busy fighting it for him; that was how it had come to pass that I had forgotten Joyce's business.
Mother and I sat in the low window-seat of the parlor straining our eyes over the mending of the family socks and stockings by the waning light of the June evening. Mother had missed Joyce very much. I had not been all that a daughter should have been to her since I had been in sole charge; I had been preoccupied, and she had missed Joyce much more, I knew very well, than she chose to confess. Knowing this as I did, I thought the moment would be well chosen to speak of what should affect Joyce's happiness; I thought her heart would be soft to her. But on this point I was mistaken. Mother did not alter her opinion because her heart was soft. She could be very tender, but she was most certainly also very obstinate.