“How pleased the boy looks, to be sure!” observed Woodruffe to his wife,
as his son Allan caught up little Moss (as Maurice had chosen to call
himself before he could speak plain) and made him jump from the top of
the drawers upon the chair, and then from the chair to the ground. “He
is making all that racket just because he is so pleased he does not know
what to do with himself.”
“I suppose he will forgive Fleming now for carrying off Abby,” said the
mother. “I say, Allan, what do you think now of Abby marrying away from
us?”
“Why, I think it’s a very good thing. You know she never told me that we
should go and live where she lived, and in such a pretty place, too,
where I may have a garden of my own, and see what I can make of it—all
fresh from the beginning, as father says.”
“You are to try your hand at the business, I know,” replied the mother,
“but I never heard your father, nor any one else, say that the place was
a pretty one. I did not think new railway stations had been pretty
places at all.”
“It sounds so to him, naturally,” interposed Woodruffe. “He hears of a
south aspect, and a slope to the north for shelter, and the town seen
far off; and that sounds all very pleasant. And then, there is the
thought of the journey, and the change, and the fun of getting the
ground all into nice order, and, best of all, the seeing his sister so
soon again. Youth is the time for hope and joy, you know, love.”
And Woodruffe began to whistle, and stepped forward to take his turn at
jumping Moss, whom he carried in one flight from the top of the drawers
to the floor. Mrs. Woodruffe smiled, as she thought that youth was not
the only season, with some people, for hope and joy.
Her husband, always disposed to look on the bright side; was
particularly happy this evening. The lease of his market-garden ground
was just expiring. He had prospered on it; and would have desired
nothing better than to live by it as long as he lived at all. He desired
this so much that he would not believe a word of what people had been
saying for two years past, that his ground would be wanted by his
landlord on the expiration of the lease, and that it would not be let
again. His wife had long foreseen this; but not till the last moment
would he do what she thought should have been done long before—offer to
buy the ground. At the ordinary price of land, he could accomplish the
purchase of it; but when he found his landlord unwilling to sell, he bid
higher and higher, till his wife was so alarmed at the rashness, that
she was glad when a prospect of entire removal opened. Woodruffe was
sure that he could have paid off all he offered at the end of a few
years; but his partner thought it would have been a heavy burden on
their minds, and a sad waste of money; and she was therefore, in her
heart, obliged to the landlord for persisting in his refusal to sell.
When that was settled, Woodruffe became suddenly sure that he could pick
up an acre or two of land somewhere not far off. But he was mistaken;
and, if he had not been mistaken, market-gardening was no longer the
profitable business it had been, when it enabled him to lay by something
every year. By the opening of a railway, the townspeople, a few miles
off, got themselves better supplied with vegetables from another
quarter. It was this which put it into the son-in-law’s head to propose
the removal of the family into Staffordshire, where he held a small
appointment on a railway. Land might be had at a low rent near the
little country station where his business lay; and the railway brought
within twenty minutes’ distance a town where there must be a
considerable demand for garden produce. The place was in a raw state at
present; and there were so few houses, that, if there had been a choice
of time, the Flemings would rather have put off the coming of the family
till some of the cottages already planned had been built; but the
Woodruffes must remove in September, and all parties agreed that they
should not mind a little crowding for a few months. Fleming’s cottage
was to hold them all till some chance of more accommodation should
offer.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Woodruffe, after standing for some time, half
whistling and thinking, with that expression on his face which his wife
had long learned to be afraid of, “I’ll write to-morrow—let’s see—I may
as well do it to-night;” and he looked round for paper and ink. “I’ll
write to Fleming, and get him to buy the land for me at once.”
“Before you see it?” said his wife, looking up from her stocking
mending.
“Yes. I know all about it, as much as if I were standing on it this
moment; and I am sick of this work—of being turned out just when I had
made the most of a place, and got attached to it. I’ll make a sure thing
of it this time, and not have such a pull at my heartstrings again. And
the land will be cheaper now than later; and we shall go to work upon it
with such heart, if it is our own! Eh?”
“Certainly, if we find, after seeing it, that we like it as well as we
expect. I would just wait till then.”
“As well as we expect! Why, bless my soul! don’t we know all about it?
It is not any land-agent or interested person, that has described it to
us; but our own daughter and her husband; and do not they know what we
want? The quantity at my own choice; the aspect capital; plenty of water
(only too much, indeed); the soil anything but poor, and sand and marl
within reach to reduce the stiffness; and manure at command, all along
the railway, from half-a-dozen towns; and osier beds at hand (within my
own bounds if I like) giving all manner of convenience for fencing, and
binding, and covering! Why, what would you have?”
“It sounds very pleasant, certainly.”
“Then, how can you make objections? I can’t think where you look, to
find any objections?”
“I see none now, and I only want to be sure that we shall find none when
we arrive.”
“Well! I do call that unreasonable! To expect to find any place on earth
altogether unobjectionable! I wonder what objection could be so great as
being turned out of one after another, just as we have got them into
order. Here comes our girl. Well, Becky, I see how you like the news!
Now, would not you like it better still if we were going to a place of
our own, where we should not be under any landlord’s whims? We should
have to work, you know, one and all. But we would get the land properly
manured, and have a cottage of our own in time; would not we? Will you
undertake the pigs, Becky?”
“Yes, father; and there are many things I can do in the garden too. I am
old and strong, now; and I can do much more than I have ever done here.”
“Aye; if the land was our own,” said Woodruffe, with a glance at his
wife. She said no more, but was presently upstairs putting Moss to bed.
She knew, from long experience, how matters would go. After a restless
night, Woodruffe spoke no more of buying the land without seeing it; and
he twice said, in a meditative, rather than a communicative, way, that
he believed it would take as much capital as he had to remove his
family, and get his new land into fit condition for spring crops.