"Your Mr. Van Norden wouldn't have done the thing in such style, eh?" enquired Sir Josiah.
"No, sir, not to be thought of, not for a moment, Squire!"
It meant thousands, yet what did thousands matter to Sir Josiah with his hundreds of thousands? He spent and spent, he was extravagant. Before, as he said himself, one could say "Jack Robinson," he had an army of workpeople slaving at the place, and he walked about the house and garden and saw his men doing his work and drawing his pay, and for the first time in his life he felt himself a really great man.
And once—once his forebears had delved and dug this very soil that was now his own! Once for a few miserable shillings a week had they turned over the sweet brown earth over which he was lord and master.
In Little Stretton, in Homewood, at Bargate and Bushcorner, and all the little villages round about, there were smiling faces and curtseys for him and he was utterly unconscious that one pair of blue eyes grew hard and bitter and one red lipped mouth curled with contempt and dislike, that in one soft little breast a usually tender little heart was filled with hate for him. For this was the mab who had bought "her" garden, and who was spoiling it, spoiling it so that it would never, never again, be as it hud been. With one wave of his thick hand he had banished all those dear ghosts of the past who had been her friends, even more her friends than the honest, red faced rustics who were very much real flesh and blood, and who regarded her with commiserating eyes as a "queer" maid.
Oozing satisfaction and gold, Sir Josiah was beloved of everyone save of this unreasonable little maid, who hated his jolly round red face and loathed the sound of his loud and domineering voice.
"Get some of them old trees cut down and out of the way, Dalabey, get all this tangle rooted out of it and get that wall pointed, yes that's what it wants—pointing, make it look smart—and Dalabey——"
"Yes, Squire?"
"How about some broken class along the top of the walls? We don't want people climbing over and trespassing, Dalabey!"
"Certainly, Squire, broken glass!"