“You ought not to laugh at him before Mr. Kellock,” she said; “because he’s one of them serious-minded men who don’t understand laughter. I’ve seen a man say things in a light mood that had no sting in them really, yet one of the humourless sort, listening, didn’t see it was said for fun, and reported it after and made trouble. Kellock’s a solemn man and would misread it if you scored off Ned, or said some flashy thing that meant nought in truth. You know what I mean.” They had strolled to the top of the orchard now, where the children were playing in the Priory ruin. And here at dusk they parted. “We’ll leave it till we can have another talk,” said Lydia; “seemingly there’s more to talk about than I thought. Be patient as well as proud, Medora. And don’t feel so troubled about Ned that you haven’t got no spare time to look into your own heart and see if you’re satisfied with yourself. Because very often in my experience, when we’re seeing misfortune and blaming other people, if we look at home, we’ll find the source of the trouble lies with ourselves and not them.” CHAPTER IV A NEW VATMAN A man stood on the crown of a limestone quarry, where it bit into the slope of a green hill. Perched here, three hundred feet above the valley bottom, a varied scene spread round about, but he was only concerned with the other side of the coomb and the great pile of Dene Paper Mill that stood over against him. On his left opened the creek heavily fringed with trees. Mud banks oozed out upon it and the river channel twinkled in the midst of them. The beholder saw that the sea ascended to this rural scene, bringing its weeds and shells to the little beaches and its birds to the air. From this inlet, the great valley broke and pointed west. It expanded and widened among such rolling green steeps as that upon which the stranger stood, and the heights were capped at the skyline, here by clumps of Scotch fir; here, by spinneys of oak and elm; here, by arable or pasture. Rows of small houses lay among the orchards in the bottom, where a stream wound, and the methodical ordering of those tenements marked a sharp contrast with the irregular and older cottages round them. They were the homes of busy people drawn hither for one purpose, and above them towered the great hive wherein they worked. The Mill spread under a knoll of trees on the hillside and shone out grey and blue against the autumn colour of the hanging woods behind it.