“Your lower pastures are too rank,” she said. “So long as there is a succession of fine seasons it does not matter, but a wet spring and summer will trouble you. You will have fifty acres of water-sodden meadows, and nothing breeds disease more quickly.”
“None o’ my cattle hev had a day’s illness, short o’ bein’ a trifle overfed wi’ oil cake,” he said testily.
“Quite so. You told me that in former years you raised wheat and oats there. I’m talking about grass.”
Martin and Angèle became close friends. The only children of the girl’s social rank in the neighborhood were the vicar’s daughter, Elsie Herbert, and the squire’s two sons, Frank and Ernest Beckett-Smythe. Mr. Beckett-Smythe was a widower. He lived at the Hall, three-quarters of a mile away, and had not as yet met Mrs. Saumarez. Angèle would have nothing to do with Elsie.
“I don’t like her,” she confided to Martin. “She doesn’t care for boys, and I adore them. She’s trop reglée for me.”
“What is that?”
“Well, she holds her nose—so.”
Angèle tilted her head and cast down her eyes.
“Of course, I don’t know her, but she seems to be a nice girl,” said Martin.
“Why do you say, ‘Of course, I don’t know her’? She lives here, doesn’t she?”