n farmer she was no doubt just a
freak, a sport, in the eyes of the village. Well, she prophesied they
would take her seriously before long.

"I'm afraid I haven't as much to show you, miss, as I'd like," said
Hastings, as he helped her to alight. "It's cruel work nowadays trying to
do anything of this kind. Two of the men that began work last week have
been called up, and there's another been just 'ticed away from me this
week. The wages that some people about will give are just mad!" He threw
up his hands. "Colonel Shepherd says he can't compete."

Miss Henderson replied civilly but decidedly that somehow or other the
work would have to be done. If Colonel Shepherd couldn't find the wages,
she must pay the difference. Get in some time, during August, she must.

The bailiff looked at her with a little sluggish surprise. He was not
used to being hustled, still less to persons who were ready to pay rather
than be kept waiting. He murmured that he dared say it would be all
right, and she must come and look.

They turned to the right up a stony pitch, through a dilapidated gate,
and so into the quadrangle of the farm. To the left was a long row of
open cow-sheds, then cow-houses and barns, the stables, a large shed in
which stood an old and broken farm cart, and finally the house, fronting
the barns.

The house was little more than a large cottage built in the shabbiest way
forty years ago, and of far less dignity than the fine old barn on which
it looked. It abutted at one end on the cart-shed, and between it and the
line of cow-sheds was the gate into the farmyard.

Miss Henderson stepped up to the house and looked at it.

"It is a poor place!" she said discontentedly; "and those men don't seem
to have done much to it yet."

Hastings admitted it. But they had done a little, he said, shamefacedly,
and he unlocked the door. Miss Henderson lingered outside a moment.

"I never noticed," she said, "that the living room goes right through.
What draughts there'll be in the winter!"

For as she stood looking into the curtainless window that fronted the
farm-yard, she saw through it a further window at the back of the room,
and beyond that a tree. Both windows were large and seemed to take up
most of the wall on either side of the small room. The effect was
peculiarly comfortless, as though no one living in the room could
possibly enjoy any shred of privacy. There were no cosy corners in it
anywhere, and Miss Henderson