“I say!” he exclaimed. “You have rigged Dolly out wonderfully! I’ve never seen such clothes.”
Mrs. Darling smiled. “I believe in pretty dresses,” she said, with fervent conviction. “They tend to virtue. I believe that when the respectable women of England took to wearing what were called indecent clothes, they struck their first effective blow at the power of Piccadilly. Has it never occurred to you that young peers have almost ceased to marry chorus girls now that peer’s daughters dress like leading ladies?”
The honeymoon was spent upon the Riviera, and here it was that Jim realized for the first time the exactions of marriage. This exquisitely costumed little wife of his could not be taken to the kind of inn which he had been accustomed to patronize, and he was therefore obliged to endure all the discomforts of fashionable hotel life, with its nerve-racking corollaries—the jabbering crowds, the perspiring, stiff-shirted diners, the clatter, bustle and perplexity, terminating in each case in the dreaded crisis of gratuity-giving and escape.
With all his Bedouin heart he loathed this sort of thing, and, had he not been the slave of love, he would have rebelled against it at once. Dolly saw his distress, but only added to it by her superior efforts to train him in the way in which he should go; and it was with a sigh of profound relief that at length he found himself in Eversfield once more, when the first buds of spring were powdering the trees with green, and the early daffodils were opening to the growing warmth of the sun.
Jim’s work in connection with the estate was not onerous, but he very soon found that various small matters had constantly to be seen to, and often they were the cause of annoyance. Rents were not always paid promptly, and if his agent pressed for them the tenants regarded Jim, who knew nothing about it, as stern and exacting. Mr. Merrivall held his lease of Rose Cottage on terms which provided that the tenant should be responsible for all interior repairs; and now he announced that the kitchen boiler was worn out, and the question had to be decided as to whether a boiler was an interior or a structural fitting. Some eighty acres were farmed by Mr. Hopkins on a sharing agreement, that is to say, Jim took a part of the profits in lieu of rent; but this sort of arrangement is always fruitful of disputes, and, in the case in question, the fact that Jim instinctively mistrusted Farmer Hopkins, and Farmer Hopkins mistrusted Jim, led at once to friction.
Matters came to a head in the early summer. The farmer had decided to remove the remains of a last year’s hayrick from the field where it stood to a shed near his stable, and, during the process, he attempted to make a short-cut by drawing his heavily-loaded wagon over a disused bridge which spanned a ditch. The bridge, however, collapsed under the weight, and the wagon was wrecked.
The farmer thereupon demanded compensation from Jim, since the latter was the owner of the bridge and therefore responsible for it. Jim, however, replied that that road had been closed for many years to all but pedestrians, and, if anything, the farmer ought to pay for the mending of the bridge. Mr. Hopkins then declared that he was going to law, and, in the meantime, he aired his grievances nightly at the “Green Man,” the village public-house.
The trouble simmered for a time, and then, one morning, the two men met by chance at the scene of the disaster. A wordy argument followed, and Farmer Hopkins, with a mouthful of oaths, repeated his determination to go to law, whereupon Jim lost his temper.
“Look here!” he said. “I don’t know anything about your blasted law, but I do know when I’m being imposed upon. If you mention the word ‘law’ to me again I’ll put my fist through your face.”
“Two can play at that game,” exclaimed the farmer, red with anger.