“Very bad. Doctor Manning was here again this evening.”
“Well, he’s nearly ninety—a man can’t expect to live for ever. Time he did go.”
John Grange walked away toward the head-gardener’s cottage to ask for the last news, and Daniel Barnett stood watching him with a frown on his rather handsome features.
“Poor old Dunton!” said John Grange to himself; “we shall miss him when he’s gone.”
“Hang him!” muttered Barnett, “that’s it. I saw him talking to the old man, but he hasn’t won yet. Insolence, eh? I like that. The Barnetts are as good as the Ellis’s, anyhow. Wait a bit, my lady, and I may take a bit of the pride out of you.”
Some men have a habit of thinking across the grain.
Chapter Two.
At seven o’clock next morning John Grange felt better when he stood with Daniel Barnett, old Tummus, and Mary Ellis’s father at the foot of the great cedar facing the house, a tree sadly shorn of its beauty by a sudden squall that had swept down the valley, and snapped off the top, where an ugly stump now stood out forty feet from the lawn.