ex:
Unner t' beech and t' yow Nowt 'll grow.
Well, as years passed, Mr. Hermann-Postlethwaite became fonder and
fonder of the wood. He began towards 1885 to think it the nicest thing
on his estate--which it was; and he would often ride out to look at it
of a morning on his grey mare "Betsy." When he rode out like this of a
morning his mount was well groomed, and so was he, however early it
might be, and he would carry a little cane to hit the mare with and also
as a symbol of authority. The people who met him would touch their
foreheads, and he would wave his hand genially in reply. He was a good
fellow. But the principal thing about him was his care for the old wood;
and when he rode out to look at it, as I say, he would speak to any one
around so early--his bailiff, as might be, or sometimes his agent, or
even the foreman of the workshop or the carpenter, or any hedger or
ditcher that might be there, and point out bits of the wood, and say,
"That branch looks pretty dicky. No harm to cut that off short and
parcel and serve the end and cap it with a zinc cap;" or, "Better be
cutting the Yartle Bush for the next fallow, it chokes the gammon-rings,
and I don't like to see so much standard ivy about, it's the death of
trees." I am not sure that I have got the technical words right, but at
any rate they were more or less like that, for I have heard him myself
time and again. I often used to go out with him on another horse, called
Sultan, which he lent me to ride upon.
Well, he got fonder and fonder of this wood, and kept on asking people
what he should do, and how one could make most use of it, and he worried
a good deal about it. He reads books about woods, and in the opening of
1891 he had down to stay with him for a few days a man called Churt, who
had made a great success with woods on the Warra-Warra. But Churt was a
vulgar fellow, and so Hermann-Postlethwaite's wife, Lady Gywnnys
Hermann-Postlethwaite, would not have him in the house again, which was
a bother. Her husband then rode over to see another man, and the upshot
of it was that he put up a great board saying "Trespassers in this wood
will be prosecuted," and it might as well not have been put up, for no
one ever went into the wood, not even from the little town, because it
was too far for them to walk, and, anyhow, they did not care for
walking. And as for the doctor's son, a boy of thirteen, who went in
there with an air-gun to shoot things, h
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