"It's all through that confounded 'lection. I wish with all my heart that you'd lost it!" "So do I wish with all my heart that I'd lost it--only I wouldn't for the world have her ladyship hear me say so." "Lord! how we shall all miss you down here at the old place! But there! it seems months now since we saw you about the fields with your billycock on your head and your spud in your hand, or riding Gray Dapple from one farm to another, and all through that confounded 'lection. And now Gray Dapple's that fat for want of exercise she can hardly get out o' the stable door, and everything looks different since you took to them 'lectioneering ways." "I am missed, then, a little bit, am I, Cozzard?" "I should think you just was, Sir Thomas.--Why even old Granny Roper at the toll-bar says to me, only yesterday, says she: 'My snuff doesn't seem to have the right flavour now the squire's not here to dip his fingers in my box.'" "The old girl said that, did she! I'll send her a quarter of a pound of the best rappee this very afternoon." "Why the very dogs, Spot, and Ranger, and Lob, seem to miss you. I know they do. And poor old John Nutley as died t'other day--eighty and five weeks was his age--what were his last words? Why these: 'Give my respex to Sir Thomas,' says he, 'as has been a good master to me, and tell him as I should like to have seen him again afore going home. He would have shaken bands with me, I know he would, if he had been here.'" "Poor old John! But why didn't you send for me?" "You were speechifying at Pembridge," said Cozzard sententiously, not without a touch of contempt in his voice. Sir Thomas coughed and turned the subject. "What I want you to do," said he, "is to write me a long letter once a week while I'm away in London, telling me how everything is going on. Not but what I shall drop down and see you sometimes on a Saturday. I would come every week--it's not a long journey--only you know----," and Sir Thomas actually winked at Cozzard. "Only her ladyship wouldn't like it," said Cozzard bluntly. "That's just it. When I'm not busy at the House she will want me to go out with her. She doesn't like me to be gadding about by myself." "Just like my old woman when she fetches me of a night from the Green Lion." "You will write me the letter, won't you, Cozzard--a good long one every Saturday? You will tell me how the stock is getting on, and how the crops look, and give a look at the kitchen garden, and see that a couple of hampers of fresh vegetables are sent up to us every week, and----" "But, Sir Thomas----!" pleaded Cozzard, with a visible lengthening of his thin visage. "I couldn't put down half that, not if I was to write all day on Sunday. Six lines is the most as ever I could manage, and then there mustn't be any long words in it."