Harry Stanhope’s deterioration in every respect included his inveterate idleness in all pursuits which did not take the form of sport or frolic, while ploughing, sowing, cattle-feeding, even hay-making and reaping, when they ceased to be novelties, ceased also to be sport or frolic, lost every element of interest and amusement, and became positively repugnant to the man who remained always a boy. He neglected his farming utterly, or made wild havoc with it in his fitful, reckless operations, forced sales, and consequent desperate losses. With all this wanton waste Fan had nothing to do. She had accomplished wonders in the _rôle_ she had undertaken. Her dairy produce and poultry were from the first among the best in the neighbourhood. She competed successfully with those farmers’ wives who were either nothing save dairymaids and henwives, or who employed experienced servants to do their mistresses’ work by proxy. Any prizes which agricultural societies awarded to the tenants of Copley Grange Farm were for its mistress’s butter and cheese, goslings and turkey poults. And all the time Fan was not a dairymaid alone, she was a gentleman’s wife deserving of the name. In order to unite the contrasting attributes, she rose up early and lay down late, and ate the bread of carefulness. She changed her dress as often as any fine lady who has nothing to do, no occupation or pleasure in life save dressing herself by the help of a maid. Fan was rewarded when Harry noticed the freshness of her calicot morning gown, the daintiness of her afternoon piqué, the good taste of her evening grenadine. Neither Harry nor Horace had an idea of gardening beyond sticking a spade into the ground once in the course of the spring and leaving it there after a quarter of an hour, or gathering an occasional handful of strawberries, while the cook demanded a regular supply of vegetables, and the masters missed seasonable fruit when it was not forthcoming, appearing to expect cherries, peaches, and pears to drop from the skies like manna. Fan read garden chronicles alternately with dairy manuals, and spent many a fatiguing hour of her early married life striving to direct the labours of an improvised gardener drawn from the ranks of the field workers. It was as much out of the question for Harry to keep a skilled gardener as it was for Fan to set up a qualified housekeeper and an experienced dairymaid, though Harry would have attempted it without a doubt if he had been suffered. But Fan stinted herself of all other worthy assistants, because a good cook and a trained table-boy who could cater for the two young men and wait upon them as they had been used to be waited upon, became absolutely necessary to the Stanhopes, as soon as their establishment at Copley Grange Farm acquired a settled character, and ceased to partake of the nature of living for a time _al fresco_, or _in villeggiatura_.