“Ah-h-h! A sight o’ folks comes to our village, so pretty and peart it be.”
“Not much new building going on.”
“Well, no. My lady don’t hold wi’ improvements. New cottages be needed bad, too.”
“You’re a bit overcrowded, I take it?”
“That be God A’mighty’s truth. I ain’t one to complain, but ’tis a fact that Upworthy don’t march wi’ the times. Never did, I reckons. When the kids grows up they has to muck it like pigs in a sty. But I don’t tell all I knows.”
Grimshaw passed on. He shot a glance upwards at the windows of bedrooms that held too many children. It was a lovely sunny afternoon, but the upper windows were closed. At the back of each cottage were sties. The county was celebrated for its bacon. He could smell roses; and he could smell pigs. His steps quickened as he left the village behind him.
He was now—as Pawley had informed him—in the heart of the Chandos domain. Cattle browsed placidly in fields enclosed by hedgerows, not hedges, hedgerows beloved by pheasants in October and November. Quite close to the village lay a snipe-bog, which ought to have been drained. From a man at work on the road Grimshaw learnt that the snipe-bog harboured wild-fowl as well as snipe.
“ ’Tis as good a bit o’ rough shooting as I knows.”
“A lot of rabbits, eh?”
“Too many,” said the man. “A rare noosance they be.”