“I am sorry for them,” said my father,“ because they will be full of alarm, and may, by mismanagement, make that an evil which ought to be none. If they choose, they may be the better for this change. Whether they will choose it is the question.”
“That they will be the better in the end, I have no doubt,” replied my mother. “But how are they to do without pasture for their cows in the mean time?”
“An allotment of land will be given to each,” replied my father, “which may be made much more valuable than the right of common, of which people think so much.”
“But, mamma,” said I, “you spoke of the common as waste land, just as if it was of no use to anybody. Surely, if it feeds cows for the whole village, and geese besides, it is quite useful enough?”
“Not if it can be made more useful by cultivation[cultivation], Lucy,” said my father. “It is now but poor pasture for a score of cows and a few geese. If it can be made to produce abundant food for double the number of cattle, and some hundreds of human beings besides, we may well call its present condition waste, in comparison with that which will be.”
“But it will be very expensive work to bring it to this state,” argued I. “How much it will cost to make the fences and prepare the ground before anything will grow in it!”
“That is the affair of those who are going to lay out their capital upon it,” replied he. “You may trust them for having made their calculations that they will be repaid in time. If you should see that day, if you live to admire fine fields of corn and valuable plantations flourishing where nothing grows now but heath and broom, you will wonder that you could ever lament the change because it has cost you the loss of a pretty walk.”
I was ready to allow that my regret was selfish.
“As[“As] for you, children,” added my father, turning to the little boys, “it is natural that you should ask about your kite and your boat. I can tell you for your comfort that the pond is not to be touched, and that there will be plenty of room for some years to come for all your sports. The whole common will not be enclosed at once, and the level ground will be taken in first. So you may play at hide and seek among the hillocks till you grow too old for the game.”
As we went for our evening walk, we could perceive that there was an unusual stir in the village. Two or three old men, who were always to be seen about sunset sitting on the bench under the elm in front of the public-house, were smoking their pipes very quietly; but more than the usual number of gossips was standing round them, and the politicians who took the lead in the discussion of the news were holding forth with more than common energy of speech and action.—On one side of the tree two men appeared engaged in an argument less vehement, and to which there were no listeners. One was Sergeant Rayne, who, having spent many years in foreign parts and lost an arm there, had come back, covered with glory, to spend his remaining days in his native village, where he was looked up to as a kind of oracle on account of his superior knowledge of the world. His companion was the grocer, who conceived himself to be little less of a man of the world than Sergeant Rayne, since he had paid three visits to London, and many more to the market town of M——.