Nell moved toward the open door, but Mr. Wicks followed her as if loath to let her go.
"Rare cut up we was, miss, when we heard that him and the old earl had quarreled and the old gentleman had gone and got married, which was just like the Anglefords—always so hotheaded and flyaway. Yes, it was a cruel blow to Lord Selbie, or so it seemed; but it all turned out right, seeing that there wasn't a heir born to cut him out. Not that any of us had a word to say about the lady the old earl married. As nice and as pretty—begging her pardon—a little lady, though a foreigner, as ever you met. Yes, it's all right, and our young gentleman as we was all so fond of is coming into his own, as the saying is. Yes, miss, it shall be sent up at once, certainly. And good day to you, miss!"
Wherever she went, Nell found the people rejoicing at the coming advent of the new lord, who was anything but new to most of them, who, like Wicks, knew and were attached to him. Before she had finished her shopping, Nell found herself quite interested in the new master of Anglemere, and wondered whether she should see him and what he would be like. By the time she had got back to the lodge, her headache had gone, and she was singing to herself as she arranged some flowers she had picked on her way through the woods.
In the afternoon, she went for a long walk; but, long as it was, it did not by any means take her out of the domains of the Earl of Angleford, which stretched away for miles round the great house. She saw farms dotted here and there on the hillsides, and looking prosperous with their cattle and sheep feeding in the fields, and the corn waving like a green sea on the slopes of the hills. There were large plantations, in which she disturbed the game; and parklike spaces, in which colts frisked beside the brood mares, for which Anglemere was famous all the world over.
Everything spoke in an eloquent and emphatic way of wealth, and Nell sighed and grew rather pensive, now and again, as she thought of the denizens of Beaumont Buildings, and the grinding poverty in which their lives were spent. But that was like Nell—tender-hearted Nell of Shorne Mills.
Dick came home to dinner, tired, and approved of the steak, which, he declared, beat even the ham and eggs.
"We're getting on first-rate," he said, in answer to Nell's inquiry; "and I'm afraid we shan't make a very long stay here. I'd hoped that this job would spin out for—oh, ever so long; but it will have to be pushed through in a few weeks. They're waking up at the house like mad. Money makes the mare go! And there's no end to the money this young lord has got. But, from all I hear, he's a decent sort——"
Nell laughed.
"Please don't you begin to sing his praises, Dick," she said. "I've heard a general chorus of laudations all the morning, and I think I am just a wee bit tired of my Lord of Angleford! Though I'm very grateful to him for this change! I wish we could turn lodgekeepers, Dick! Fancy living here always!"
They were seated in the porch—Dick smoking away furiously—and she gazed wistfully at the greensward, and the trunks of the great elms glowing like copper in the rays of the setting sun.