Deb laughed louder than ever. "There, bless you, my dear," said she; "you never could see round a corner; but you've more common-sense than the lot of 'em. Why should folk owe the man a grudge, to be sure? All the same, your mother'll spoil him afore she's done with him. Curtains, indeed! I never knowed a bailiff as needed 'em before."
Mother came back at that moment with the things, and I hastened to beg Joyce to accompany me up to "The Elms" after dinner. Somehow, although in my heart I knew that I was longing to see Trayton Harrod again, a sudden shyness had come over me at the thought of meeting him, and I wanted Joyce to be there.
Joyce, however, would not come; she begged off on the score of many household jobs that had got behind-hand in her absence, and mother said that I might just as well go alone and get the thing done with Dorcas's help, for that of course the bailiff was sure to be out at that time of day.
So alone I was forced to go. Most likely, as mother said, Mr. Harrod would be out; but I took Taff with me—a dog was better than most human beings; and with Taff at my heels I felt my self-consciousness evaporate.
I crossed the lane and skirted the brow of the hill behind the pine-tree lane; the mill-arms faced the village with a west wind, but the breeze had dropped since morning, and the air was heavy and thunderous. I thought I would go round by the new reservoir and see how the work was getting on. Mr. Harrod would very likely be there: it was that one among his new ventures about which at the moment he was the most excited, and the pipes were just about to be laid; even if I met him he was not obliged to know that I was going to "The Elms."
My heart began to beat a little as I drew near the group, but the bailiff was not there; only old Luck, the sheep-dog, ambled towards me wagging his tail, and I knew that Reuben could not be far off. Sure enough, there he was among the men, who were just leaving off work, talking to Jack Barnstaple.
"I want to know whatever he needs to come stuffing his new-fangled notions down folk's throats as have thriven on the old ones all their lives?" the latter was saying. "We don't understand such things hereabouts. We haven't been so well brought up. He'd best let us alone."
"Yes, I telled him so," said Reuben, sagely, shaking his stately white head, that looked for all the world like parson's when he had his hat off; "but these young folk they must always be thinking they knows better than them as has a life's experience. But look 'ere, lads, we hain't been educated at the Agricultural College at Ashford, ye know."
"Blow the Agricultural College," muttered Jack Barnstaple.
"Yes; and so he'll say when he finds out he's none so sure about these Golding 'ops. And so master'll say when he finds as he's dropped all his money over pipes and wells as was never meant to answer."