eighbour," he said gravely. "Perhaps you and I
will reap no great benefit from it; though, if we live, we shall; but
instead of leaving to our boys, when they take up our work, neighbour,
either because we are called away to our rest or because we have grown
old, these farms with so much good land and so much watery bog, we shall
leave them acre upon acre of good solid land, that has been useless to
us, but which will bear them crops and feed their beasts."

"Yes," said Farmer Tallington, "there's something in that, but--"

"Come, neighbour, look ahead. Every foot that drain comes into the fen
it will lower the level, and we shall see--and before long--our farm
land grow, and the water sink."

"Ye-es; but it's so like working for other people!"

"Well," said the squire laughing, "what have you been doing in that half
acre of close beside your house?"

"That! Oh, only planted it with pear-trees so as to make a bit of an
orchard!"

"Are you going to pick a crop of pears next year, neighbour?"

"Next year! Bah! They'll be ten years before they come well into
bearing." [This was the case with the old-fashioned grafting.]

"So will the acres laid bare by the draining," said the squire smiling,
"and I hope we shall live to see our boys eating the bread made from
corn grown on that patch of water and reeds, along with the pears from
your trees."

"That's a clincher," said the farmer. "You've coot the ground from
under me, neighbour, and I wean't grudge the money any more."

"I wish father wouldn't say _coot_ and _wean't_!" whispered Tom, whose
school teaching made some of the homely expressions and bits of dialect
of the fen-land jar.

"Why not? What does it matter?" said Dick, who was busy twisting the
long hairs from a sorrel nag's tail into a fishing-line.

"Sounds so broad. Remember how the doctor switched Bob Robinson for
saying he'd been _agate_ early."

"Yes, I recollect," said Dick, tying a knot to keep the hairs from
untwisting; "and father said he ought to have been ashamed of himself,
for _agate_ was good old Saxon, and so were all the words our people use
down here in the fen. I say, what are they talking about now?"

"Well, for my part," said the squire rather hotly, in reply to some
communication his visitor had made, "so long as I feel that I'm doing
what is right, no threats shall ever stop me from going forward."

"But they seem to think it arn't right," said the farmer. "Those in t