“Well, I must frankly say, Mr—ought I to say Squire Winthorpe?”
“No, no, Mr Marston,” was the laughing reply, “I am only a plain farmer. It is the fashion down here to call a man with a few acres of his own a squire. I’m squire, you see, of a lot of bog.”
“Which we shall make good land, Mr Winthorpe,” said the engineer. “But I was going to say it will be a treat to come over from my lonely lodgings to some one who will make me welcome, for I must say the common people here are rather ill-disposed.”
“Only snarling,” said the squire. “They daren’t bite. They don’t like any alterations made. Take no notice of their surly ways. The soreness will soon wear off. Cruel thing to do, Mr Marston, turn a piece of swamp into a wholesome field!”
They both laughed, and soon after parted.
“I rather like that young fellow, Dick,” said the squire. “Knows a deal about antiquities. Little too old for a companion for you, but people who collect butterflies and nettles and flowers generally mix regardless of age.”
“Do you think the people about will interfere with the works, father?” said Dick, as they trudged along homeward.
“No, I don’t, Dick,” said the squire. “I should like to catch them at it.”
Dick went to bed that night very tired, and dropped asleep directly, thinking of Dave and the expedition to set trimmers, or “liggers” as they called them, and he was soon in imagination afloat upon the lanes and pools of water among the reeds, with Dave softly thrusting down his pole in search of hard places, where the point would not sink in. Then he dreamed that he had baited hook after hook, attached the line to a blown-out bladder, and sent it sailing away to attract the notice of some sharking pike lurking at the edge of one of the beds of reeds.
Then he dreamed that the sun was in his eyes as it went down in a rich glow far away over the wide expanse of water and rustling dried reed, where the starlings roosted and came and went in well-marshalled clouds, all moving as if carefully drilled to keep at an exact distance one from the other, ready to wheel and turn or swoop up or down with the greatest exactness in the world.