“You have no idea on what a wide subject your question touches. If I were to tell you all the whys and wherefores on that question, we should not have done by dinner-time.”
“If you are getting upon the Corn Laws,” said Mr. Malton, “it is time I was wishing you good morning.”
“Not till I have spoken to you about a little affair in which I want your advice,” said my father. “I will not detain you five minutes.”
While they were talking, I endeavoured to discover what there was remarkable in my question. It seemed to me the simplest thing in the world that if there was too much corn in one country and too little in another, the want of the one should be supplied from the abundance of the other. While I was meditating, my father called out,
“Come, Lucy, your horse is in a reverie as well as yourself, and we shall see you both fall presently, if you do not wake up. Mr. Malton says, ‘Good day,’ and we must make the best of our way home; so now for a canter.”
We cantered till we reached the village.
Miss Black’s window looked very gay at this time. She had been to M—— to see the fashions at the rooms of a milliner who had been to see the fashions in London. The caps and bonnets were of quite a new make; and there were smarter ribbons and flowers than I had ever seen at Brooke before. She had also another apprentice, and had lately enlarged her show-room.
“I wonder what has happened to Miss Black!” I observed. “She really makes a grand display now.”
“A very good thing has happened to her, I fancy,” said my father. “She has more customers, and those customers are richer. Those gay hats and caps came out of Mr. Malton’s hedges and ditches, if you know what I mean by that.”
I supposed he meant that some new families had come to settle at Brooke on account of the demand for labourers; but I should not have thought they were people who could spend their wages in millinery.