bone manure, and he really is a man of such good sense and energy, and
was so sorry last year about the failure, that I consented; and now I
begin to see my error. I have always heard that town bakers adulterate
their flour with bone-dust; and, of course, Captain James would be aware
of this, and go to Brooke to inquire where the article was to be
purchased."

My lady always ignored the fact which had sometimes, I suspect, been
brought under her very eyes during her drives, that Mr. Brooke's few
fields were in a state of far higher cultivation than her own; so she
could not, of course, perceive that there was any wisdom to be gained
from asking the advice of the tradesman turned farmer.

But by-and-by this fact of her agent's intimacy with the person whom in
the whole world she most disliked (with that sort of dislike in which a
large amount of uncomfortableness is combined--the dislike which
conscientious people sometimes feel to another without knowing why, and
yet which they cannot indulge in with comfort to themselves without
having a moral reason why), came before my lady in many shapes. For,
indeed I am sure that Captain James was not a man to conceal or be
ashamed of one of his actions. I cannot fancy his ever lowering his
strong loud clear voice, or having a confidental conversation with any
one. When his crops had failed, all the village had known it. He
complained, he regretted, he was angry, or owned himself a --- fool, all
down the village street; and the consequence was that, although he was a
far more passionate man than Mr. Horner, all the tenants liked him far
better. People, in general, take a kindlier interest in any one, the
workings of whose mind and heart they can watch and understand, than in a
man who only lets you know what he has been thinking about and feeling,
by what he does. But Harry Gregson was faithful to the memory of Mr.
Horner. Miss Galindo has told me that she used to watch him hobble out
of the way of Captain James, as if to accept his notice, however good-
naturedly given, would have been a kind of treachery to his former
benefactor. But Gregson (the father) and the new agent rather took to
each other; and one day, much to my surprise, I heard that the "poaching,
tinkering vagabond," as the people used to call Gregson when I first had
come to live at Hanbury, had been appointed gamekeeper; Mr. Gray standing
godfather, as it were, to his trustworthiness, if he were trusted