ouldn't carry anything else, except along the boundaries. There
you might put in a row of horn-beam and oak. They always look rather
nice against a background of firs.--Only the stumps of the burnt trees
ought to be stubbed."

"Let them be stubbed," Richard said.

"Where are you going to find the labour? The estate is very much
under-manned."

"Import it," Richard said.

"No, no," Honoria answered, again warming to her subject. "I don't
believe in imported labour. If you have men by the week, they must
lodge. And the lodger is as the ten plagues of Egypt in a village. If a
man comes by the day, he is tired and slack. His heart is not in his
work. He does as little as he can. Moreover, in either case, the wife
and children suffer. He's certain to take them home short money. He's
pretty safe, being tired in the one case, or, in the other, on the
loose, to drink."

Dickie's face gave. He laughed a little.

"We seem to have come to a fine _impasse_!" he remarked. "Though
humiliatingly small, that tract of burnt land must clearly be kept to
knock one's head against."

Honoria rose to her feet.

"Richard, I wish you'd build," she said, in her earnestness unconscious
of the unceremonious character of her address. "Iles ought to have done
that before now. But he is old and timid, and his one idea has been to
save. You know this Brockhurst property alone would carry eight or ten
more families. There's plenty of work. It needn't be made. It is there
ready to hand. Give them good gardens, allotments if you can, and leave
to keep a pig. That's infinitely better than extravagant wages. Root
them down in the soil. Let them love the place--tie them up to it----"

"Your socialism is rather quaintly crossed with feudalism, isn't it?"
Dickie remarked.

He drew himself forward, slipped down off the sofa, stood upright. And
then, indeed, the cruel disparity between his stature and her own--for
tall though she was, he, by right of make and length of arm, should
evidently have been by some two or three inches the taller--and all the
grotesqueness of his deformity, were fully disclosed to Honoria. For
the second time that day, her tact, her presence of mind, her ready
speech, deserted her. She backed a little away from him.

And Richard perceived that. It is not easy to be absolutely
philosophic. Something of his old anger revived towards Miss St.
Quentin. He shuffled forward a step or two, and, steadying himself with
one hand