"Are you happy, my darling?"
"Very, very happy."
They lay for a long while in each other's arms while the sun climbed higher, the bland five o'clock sun of June.
"I must start farming to-day," Edward declared. "They'll be cutting the hay, I fancy."
"While the sun shines," she whispered, smiling.
"My lovely one, my lovely one," he breathed.
Edward was not given much time to test his willingness or ability as a farmer, because as soon as the hay had been carried old James Taylor was given notice by Sir Richard Flower to quit the farm at Ladyday. He went up to the Hall to try to see his father and find out if the notice would be rescinded should he himself give an undertaking to leave the neighborhood. Sir Richard, however, declined to see his son, and that evening he sent him his allowance for the next quarter with the intimation that this was the last money he would ever receive from his father. When the rent of his chambers and some outstanding debts in London had been paid and his few possessions sold, Edward found himself with not much more than one hundred and fifty pounds and without any prospect of earning a living. It had never occurred to him that his father would take what he thought so mean a revenge on his wife's grandfather, and he could not help feeling that at the back of Sir Richard's action was a desire to get rid of the old man who, as Edward knew, he considered an unprofitable tenant. James accepted his notice with admirable calm and dignity. He had not a word of reproach for Edward or Elizabeth, and upon his landlord's behavior his only comment was:
"It was always in my mind that he would give me notice one day. Ever since I argued the point with him over that larch plantation which I said was spoiling good grazing he had it in his heart to get rid of I. He were ashamed for a long time. And I held the farm for thirty years, and my father before me twenty-five years, and his father before that thirty-two years."
Edward was in despair; but neither old James nor Elizabeth would hear of his reproaching himself.