Then Nicholas Yelland—his son—a lad five-an’-twenty years old an’ a bit cross in the grain—found hisself master of Cator Court, as the place was called. We shook our heads, for he was known to us as a chap pretty near spoilt by over-educating. Old Yelland had got his patience an’ sense from the land, an’ his wisdom an’ sweetness of disposition out of no other book than the Bible; but his missis had great notions for her one an’ only child, an’ she wanted more than the Bible could teach him; which, in my judgement, is to cry out for better bread than can be made of wheat. Farmering weern’t a grand enough trade for him, she thought; so she kept nagging an’ nagging by day an’ night, till, in self-defence, the old man sent his lad to Tavistock Grammar School—a very great seat of larning in them days, by all accounts. Yet what they didn’t teach him was worth knowing too, for manners he never larned, nor yet his duty to his neighbour. He comed home at seventeen with some Latin, ’twas said, though ’twas only rumoured like, an’ a very pretty way of reading the lessons to church on Sundays; but when he returned, the first thing as he told his faither was, “I be a Radical in politics evermore, an’ I ban’t going to touch my hat again to nobody living. One man’s so good as another.” “So he be, Nick,” said his faither. “An’ a darned sight better, too, for that matter. The world will larn ’e that, if nothing else. I’m sorry ever I sent ’e to school, if they’ve taught ’e such tomfoolery there. But life will unlarn ’e, I hope. To touch your hat to your betters ban’t no sign of weakness in you, but a sign of sense: Lord Luscombe hisself takes off his hat to the King, an’ the King takes off his’n to God A’mighty. ’Tis the laws of Nature,” said farmer, “an’ if you break the laws o’ Nature, you’ll damn soon get broke yourself, as everybody finds out after they’m turned fifty, if not sooner.”