s. This young lady, with her strange talk, was the new
squire's daughter. And the village had already made up its mind that
Richard Boyce was "a poor sort," and "a hard sort" too, in his landlord
capacity. He wasn't going to be any improvement on his brother--not a
haporth! What was the good of this young woman talking, as she did, when
there were three summonses as he, Patton, heard tell, just taken out by
the sanitary inspector against Mr. Boyce for bad cottages? And not a
farthing given away in the village neither, except perhaps the bits of
food that the young lady herself brought down to the village now and
then, for which no one, in truth, felt any cause to be particularly
grateful. Besides, what did she mean by asking questions about the
poaching? Old Patton knew as well as anybody else in the village, that
during Robert Boyce's last days, and after the death of his sportsman
son, the Mellor estate had become the haunt of poachers from far and
near, and that the trouble had long since spread into the neighbouring
properties, so that the Winterbourne and Maxwell keepers regarded it
their most arduous business to keep watch on the men of Mellor. Of
course the young woman knew it all, and she and her father wanted to
know more. That was why she talked. Patton hardened himself against the
creeping ways of the quality.

"I don't think nought," he said roughly in answer to Mrs. Jellison.
"Thinkin' won't come atwixt me and the parish coffin when I'm took. I've
no call to think, I tell yer."

Marcella's chest heaved with indignant feeling.

"Oh, but, Mr. Patton!" she cried, leaning forward to him, "won't it
comfort you a bit, even if you can't live to see it, to think there's a
better time coming? There must be. People can't go on like this
always--hating each other and trampling on each other. They're beginning
to see it now, they are! When I was living in London, the persons I was
with talked and thought of it all day. Some day, whenever the people
choose--for they've got the power now they've got the vote--there'll be
land for everybody, and in every village there'll be a council to
manage things, and the labourer will count for just as much as the
squire and the parson, and he'll be better educated and better fed, and
care for many things he doesn't care for now. But all the same, if he
wants sport and shooting, it will be there for him to get. For everybody
will have a chance and a turn, and there'll be no bittern