"Of course!" and Leger laughed again. "You can't be a reformer for nothing; you have to take the rough with the smooth—though there is, as a rule, very little of the latter."
Ingleby said nothing further; but it dawned on him, as it had, indeed, done once or twice before, that even a defective system of preserving peace and order might be preferable to none at all. Still, he naturally would not admit his misgivings, and said nothing until the wagonettes rolled into a little white village gay with flowers and girt about by towering beeches. The windows of an old grey house caught the sunlight and flashed among the trees, and, as the vehicles drew up, a trim groom on a splendid horse swept out through the gate of a clematis-covered lodge.
Then there was a hoarse cheer from a group of dilapidated and dusty loungers as the men swung themselves down outside the black-beamed hostelry which bore a coat-of-arms above its portal. They were unusually quiet, and Leger, who glanced at them, touched Ingleby's shoulder.
"They'll do their work," he said. "Still, I fancy we are expected, and I'm not sure that I'd be sorry if we had the thing done, and were driving home again."
III
CONFLICTING CLAIMS
The sunlight beat down fiercely on the shaven grass, and a drowsy hum of bees stole through the stillness of the Sunday afternoon when Grace Coulthurst and Geoffrey Esmond strolled across the lawn at Holtcar Grange. There were at least two acres of it, flanked by dusky firs and relieved on two sides by patches of graduated colour, while on the third side one looked out towards the blue hills across the deep hollow of Willow Dene into which the beech woods rolled down. A low wall, along which great urns of scarlet geraniums were set, cut off the lawn from the edge of the descent, and Grace, seating herself on the broad coping, glanced down into the cool shadow, out of which the sound of running water came up.
"It really looks very enticing on a day like this. Don't you think it is a little hard on the Hoddam people to shut them out of it?" she said.
Her companion, who leaned, with his straw hat tilted back, against one of the flower-filled urns, smiled as he glanced down at her. He was a young man of slender, wiry frame, with an air of graceful languidness which usually sat well upon him, though there were occasions on which it was not readily distinguished from well-bred insolence.
"I suppose it is, but they brought it upon themselves," he said. "Nobody would mind their walking quietly through the Dene, even if they did leave their sandwich papers and their bottles behind them."