Her husband, always disposed to look on the bright side; was particularly happy this evening. The lease of his market-garden ground was just expiring. He had prospered on it; and would have desired nothing better than to live by it as long as he lived at all. He desired this so much that he would not believe a word of what people had been saying for two years past, that his ground would be wanted by his landlord on the expiration of the lease, and that it would not be let again. His wife had long foreseen this; but not till the last moment would he do what she thought should have been done long before—offer to buy the ground. At the ordinary price of land, he could accomplish the purchase of it; but when he found his landlord unwilling to sell, he bid higher and higher, till his wife was so alarmed at the rashness, that she was glad when a prospect of entire removal opened. Woodruffe was sure that he could have paid off all he offered at the end of a few years; but his partner thought it would have been a heavy burden on their minds, and a sad waste of money; and she was therefore, in her heart, obliged to the landlord for persisting in his refusal to sell. When that was settled, Woodruffe became suddenly sure that he could pick up an acre or two of land somewhere not far off. But he was mistaken; and, if he had not been mistaken, market-gardening was no longer the profitable business it had been, when it enabled him to lay by something every year. By the opening of a railway, the townspeople, a few miles off, got themselves better supplied with vegetables from another quarter. It was this which put it into the son-in-law’s head to propose the removal of the family into Staffordshire, where he held a small appointment on a railway. Land might be had at a low rent near the little country station where his business lay; and the railway brought within twenty minutes’ distance a town where there must be a considerable demand for garden produce. The place was in a raw state at present; and there were so few houses, that, if there had been a choice of time, the Flemings would rather have put off the coming of the family till some of the cottages already planned had been built; but the Woodruffes must remove in September, and all parties agreed that they should not mind a little crowding for a few months. Fleming’s cottage was to hold them all till some chance of more accommodation should offer. “I’ll tell you what,” said Woodruffe, after standing for some time, half whistling and thinking, with that expression on his face which his wife had long learned to be afraid of, “I’ll write to-morrow—let’s see—I may as well do it to-night;” and he looked round for paper and ink. “I’ll write to Fleming, and get him to buy the land for me at once.” “Before you see it?” said his wife, looking up from her stocking mending.