"And what better fortune could we have left us than that?" asked young Lady Paton. "I am not clever, you know, but I have always been busy either about the Court or at home; and now we can be busy thinking out the best way of helping these poor tenants."
"If they will let you help them," said her husband slyly. "I begin to think that the landlords are not quite masters of the situation, however much they may seem so. I have learned a lesson to-day from those stupid stolid fellows that I am not likely to forget; and I am afraid the Utopia will not be set up even in this little corner of the kingdom for some years to come at least."
[CHAPTER XX.]
NOT READY FOR UTOPIA.
BEFORE the winter was over, most of the cottages in the village had been made habitable, and some of the old folks who had survived the hard life in the woods had moved back to their old dwellings.
Miles had fondly hoped that when this was attained the hardest part of his task would be over, but he found to his dismay that it had only just begun.
His workmen had done well, and worked steadily and carefully until the cottages that were worth repairing had been finished; but when that was accomplished, and the old folks moved in, then their ardour for work seemed to evaporate. Miles wanted his large pastures fenced off into something like their old proportions, that the land might be made arable once more; and, as he said, it would give work to all about the place to bring it back to its former condition. But the men shook their heads to the proposal.
"It is not the custom among Englishmen to work in the winter; that is the time for wrestling and running, not for working," said the boldest of these peasants. "We have worked at the cottages because we are tired of a roving life in the woods; but what would be thought of a man who would work all the year round? What would come of our wrestling matches, which are the glory of every Englishman?"
In vain Miles argued and protested; he was always met with the same answer,—their fathers never worked in the winter, and why should they? And he found that he was expected to keep these wrestlers as well as the old folks who were too weak to work. But in their case he said, "No;" if they would not work they should not eat at his expense; and though he was half afraid the more restless of them might go off to the precarious life of the woods, they at last submitted to the inevitable, though they grumbled a good deal at the un-English demand made upon them, and Miles earned the character of being a hard man on his dependents at the very outset.
But still he had the satisfaction of seeing the fences put up, and the old landmarks restored, and he hoped this enforced labour would not be without its uses in breaking down the men's prejudices against working during the winter season, for it did not have its root in laziness, but in the pride of race. Frenchmen might, and did work, but they despised and hated the very name of a Frenchman, this feeling growing out of the frequent wars between the two countries.