"'Twill be wiser to get rids of your dislike of the gentleman, Miss Grace. Master means to see you married by next Whitsuntide." "Somebody will have to run away with me." "There's many would be very willing, I doubt not. But them as runs away with a maid, will often run away from her come presently. In this here vale o' tears, the hard deed be the wisest, nine times out o' ten. You'm so butivul as a painted picture; but your sort is often miserable in their lives, just because 'love' be the first thought and only thought in every heart as sees 'em. So you pretty ones get to think that love be the sole thing as matters." "I'm sure I don't, then; at least--I--oh, why do fathers plot and plan for us so? Is it right? Is it fair?" "A grown-up faither must be wiser than a young giglet not out of her teens." "Where's the wisdom of----?" began Grace; but her mother appeared at this moment, and Mr. Norcot followed with the master of Fox Tor Farm. After breakfast the weather mended, and Malherb insisted that Peter should ride round the estate with him--a performance of which they had been disappointed on the previous day. Norcot obeyed and admired all things, but he ventured to doubt whether a plan for bringing water from a spring by way of an open conduit would serve the purpose in winter. "It is like to freeze or choke with snow," he said. "Nonsense!" answered Malherb. "Everybody here is always whining about what will happen come winter. Did not I see last winter here myself?" "A very unusually mild one." "Well, I don't fear it. But my men shiver at the name of it. It haunts their summer. They begin to see the phantom of it before September. Woodman and Beer are always crying about it. Is it not so, man?" He addressed Mr. Beer, who was ploughing up potatoes with a yoke of oxen. The stalks had been drawn and collected in huge heaps, and now, with his coulter held close on the left of each row, Richard flung up fine tubers at every step, while Tom Putt, Mark Bickford, and several women, specially engaged for this important business, followed and filled the carts. The crop was heavy, and Mr. Malherb regarded it triumphantly. "These will astonish some of our neighbours, I fancy," he remarked. "You must have brought this land with you!" commented Peter; and the farmer was constrained to admit that the soil had called for costly preparation. The weather broke anon, and before midday the mist lifted sluggishly to the crowns of the hills, sulked there awhile, then prepared to roll down again. At his parting meal Norcot had some speech with Grace and, afterwards, succeeded in winning a little conversation with her alone. She showed indifference and impatience. Then he interested her by describing his visit to Prince Town.