we turn to such coinage as this? Will it
really profit us so much if we save our souls and lose the whole world?

PART 3 -- WILTSHIRE

XXIX

Robert--there is no occasion to mention his surname: he was a young
farmer of some education who tried to coax the aged soil of Wiltshire
scientifically--came to Cadover on business and fell in love with Mrs.
Elliot. She was there on her bridal visit, and he, an obscure nobody,
was received by Mrs. Failing into the house and treated as her social
equal. He was good-looking in a bucolic way, and people sometimes
mistook him for a gentleman until they saw his hands. He discovered
this, and one of the slow, gentle jokes he played on society was to
talk upon some cultured subject with his hands behind his back and then
suddenly reveal them. "Do you go in for boating?" the lady would ask;
and then he explained that those particular weals are made by the
handles of the plough. Upon which she became extremely interested, but
found an early opportunity of talking to some one else.

He played this joke on Mrs. Elliot the first evening, not knowing that
she observed him as he entered the room. He walked heavily, lifting his
feet as if the carpet was furrowed, and he had no evening clothes. Every
one tried to put him at his ease, but she rather suspected that he was
there already, and envied him. They were introduced, and spoke of Byron,
who was still fashionable. Out came his hands--the only rough hands in
the drawing-room, the only hands that had ever worked. She was filled
with some strange approval, and liked him.

After dinner they met again, to speak not of Byron but of manure. The
other people were so clever and so amusing that it relieved her to
listen to a man who told her three times not to buy artificial manure
ready made, but, if she would use it, to make it herself at the last
moment. Because the ammonia evaporated. Here were two packets of powder.
Did they smell? No. Mix them together and pour some coffee--An appalling
smell at once burst forth, and every one began to cough and cry. This
was good for the earth when she felt sour, for he knew when the earth
was ill. He knew, too, when she was hungry he spoke of her tantrums--the
strange unscientific element in her that will baffle the scientist to
the end of time. "Study away, Mrs. Elliot," he told her; "read all the
books you can get hold of; but when it comes to the point, stroll out
with a pipe in your mouth and do