"I like to hear the old generation praise my father," answered Jacob. "And now we must be gone. We're holiday making I must tell you—going to eat our dinner on top of the Beacon."
"And why not? Not often you make holiday."
Mr. Catt accompanied them to the outer gate and, as they went on their way, Jacob praised Matthew.
"Done for now—just waiting for time to throw him; but a rare good farmer in his day, and he's got three understanding men, so Bullstone's all right. A lot of quiet wisdom in the old chap that he didn't get out of books. The Catts were as good as the Bullstones once—yeomanry people like us; but they went down and we held up."
"There's a lot of Catts at Brent. One's a job master, and father thinks very well of him," said Margery.
"I wish Joe Elvin at Owley had a bit of old Matthew's sense; but he's always under the weather—a complaining man. Married to a good woman, though a bit fanciful in her ideas. She was upper housemaid at Beggar's Manor, and you'll find women who have gone to service in big houses pick up a lot of notions—some useful and some useless."
"Father, when he was a boy, took the first telegram that ever came to Brent out to Beggar's Manor," said Margery.
"A funny name for an estate; but no beggars ever lived there in human memory I should reckon."
Their way fell sharply beside an orchard beyond Bullstone and descended into a valley, where through the green and tangled bottom ran Glaze Brook. The road crossed this little water by a bridge of one arch, where, through a thicket of over-grown laurel, hazel and alder, peered the grey ruin of Owley Mill. But now its wheel had vanished, its roof was gone and only shattered walls remained. Beside the bridge stood a tall pear tree—a ghost of a tree draped in grey lichens that fluttered like an old woman's hair from every branch. The venerable thing still lived; leaves struggled with the parasite; scattered blossoms starred the boughs in early spring and a few small fruits annually ripened.
"Still it stands—a hundred years old, they say, and may be more," declared Jacob. Then they breasted the hill beyond and presently reached Owley. The farm showed fewer marks of prosperity than Bullstone. Green mosses throve on its ancient thatch, and the man who here pursued his life was not much disposed to tidiness.