“Cool, I must say!” said Frank, with a laugh. “Look here, Annet; these two fellows are going to take us by storm to-morrow. If I don’t want them, says Briarly, I must just shut the door in their faces.”
“But you’ll be glad to see them, won’t you, Frank?” she remarked in her innocence.
“Yes. I shall like well enough to see them again. It’s our busy time, though: they might have put it off till after harvest.”
As many friends went to this entertainment at Pitchley’s Farm as liked to go. Mr. Brandon was one of them: he walked over with us—with me, and Tod, and the Squire, and the mater. Stephen Radcliffe and his wife were there, Becca in a black silk with straps of rusty velvet across it. Stephen mostly sat still and said nothing, but Becca’s sly eyes were everywhere. Frank and his wife, well dressed and hospitable, welcomed us all; and the board was well spread with cold meats and dainties.
Old Brandon had a quiet talk with Annet in a corner of the porch. He told her he was glad to find Frank seemed likely to do well at the farm.
“He tries his very best, sir,” she said.
“Ay. Somehow I thought he would. People said ‘Frank Radcliffe has his three hundred a-year to fall back upon when he gets out of Pitchley’s’: but I fancied he might stay at Pitchley’s instead of getting out of it.”
“We are getting on as well as we can be, sir, in a moderate way.”
“A moderate way is the only safe way to get on,” said Mr. Brandon, putting his white silk handkerchief corner-wise on his head against the sun. “That’s a true saying, He who would be rich in twelve months is generally a beggar in six. You are helping Frank well, my dear. I have heard of it: how industrious you are, and keep things together. It’s not often a good old head like yours is set upon young shoulders.”
Annet laughed. “My shoulders are not so very young, sir. I was twenty-four last birthday.”