"'Twill be wiser to get rids of your dislike of the gentleman, Miss Grace. Master means to see you married by next Whitsuntide."
"Somebody will have to run away with me."
"There's many would be very willing, I doubt not. But them as runs away with a maid, will often run away from her come presently. In this here vale o' tears, the hard deed be the wisest, nine times out o' ten. You'm so butivul as a painted picture; but your sort is often miserable in their lives, just because 'love' be the first thought and only thought in every heart as sees 'em. So you pretty ones get to think that love be the sole thing as matters."
"I'm sure I don't, then; at least—I—oh, why do fathers plot and plan for us so? Is it right? Is it fair?"
"A grown-up faither must be wiser than a young giglet not out of her teens."
"Where's the wisdom of——?" began Grace; but her mother appeared at this moment, and Mr. Norcot followed with the master of Fox Tor Farm.
After breakfast the weather mended, and Malherb insisted that Peter should ride round the estate with him—a performance of which they had been disappointed on the previous day. Norcot obeyed and admired all things, but he ventured to doubt whether a plan for bringing water from a spring by way of an open conduit would serve the purpose in winter.
"It is like to freeze or choke with snow," he said.
"Nonsense!" answered Malherb. "Everybody here is always whining about what will happen come winter. Did not I see last winter here myself?"
"A very unusually mild one."