“Where do you get these beautiful short faggots from?” I asked idly. “Why, they are tallies!”
“Of course,” she said. “As I can’t read or write I’m driven back on the early English tally for my accounts. Give me one and I’ll tell you what it meant.”
I passed her an unburned hazel-tally, about a foot long, and she ran her thumb down the nicks.
“This is the milk-record for the home farm for the month of April last year, in gallons,” said she. “I don’t know what I should have done without tallies. An old forester of mine taught me the system. It’s out of date now for every one else; but my tenants respect it. One of them’s coming now to see me. Oh, it doesn’t matter. He has no business here out of office hours. He’s a greedy, ignorant man—very greedy or—he wouldn’t come here after dark.”
“Have you much land then?”
“Only a couple of hundred acres in hand, thank goodness. The other six hundred are nearly all let to folk who knew my folk before me, but this Turpin is quite a new man—and a highway robber.”
“But are you sure I sha’n’t be——?”
“Certainly not. You have the right. He hasn’t any children.”
“Ah, the children!” I said, and slid my low chair back till it nearly touched the screen that hid them. “I wonder whether they’ll come out for me.”
There was a murmur of voices—Madden’s and a deeper note—at the low, dark side door, and a ginger-headed, canvas-gaitered giant of the unmistakable tenant farmer type stumbled or was pushed in.