"Not so much as you'd think; and then the _place_ is the same, and as one grows older that counts for a lot. When one's young, one's all for change and gallivantin', but once you're up in years 'tis the old things you cares for most; 'an when I heard as the house I was born in was empty I just had to come back. Redmarley village don't change, because no one can build. Mr Ffolliot sees to that; not one rood of land will he sell, and the old houses looks just the same as when I was a little girl. Your father he left Redmarley when he was fourteen, and went 'prentice to the 'Golden Anchor,' an' he never cared for the village like me. I hardly knew him when I was young, he being twelve years older than me, and him coming home but seldom." "It must make a good deal of difference having a family at . . . the Manor," said Eloquent, with studied carelessness. He had nearly said "the Manshun," after the fashion of the villagers. "Of course it do. There's changes there, if you like." "I suppose you sometimes see . . . the young people?" "See them? I should just think we do, _and_ hear them and hear _about_ them from morning to night. There never was more mixable children than the young Ffolliots." "How many are there?" Eloquent tried to keep his voice cool and uninterested, but he felt as he used to feel when he was a child in "hiding games," when some one told him he was "getting warm." "Well, there's Mr Grantly, he's the eldest; he's going to be an officer in the army like his grandpa; he's gone apprentice to some shop." "What?" asked Eloquent, in astonishment. "I thought it a bit queer myself, but Miss Mary herself did say it. 'Grantly's gone to the shop,' she said, 'to learn to be a soldier'; and I said, 'Well, the gentry's got more sense than I thought for, if they gives 'em a trade as well.' And Miss Mary she said again, he'd gone to a shop right enough, and went off laughing." "But that's impossible," said Eloquent. "He must have gone either to Sandhurst or Woolwich; there's nowhere else he could go." "She never mentioned neither of those names. 'Shop,' she said . . . you needn't look at me like that, Eloquent . . . I'm positive." "You were telling me how many children there were," Eloquent remarked pacifically, "Grantly, the eldest son, and then . . . ?" "I'm getting warm," his mind kept saying. "Then Miss Mary, just a year younger, very like her mother she is . . . in looks, but she hasn't got the gumption of Mrs Ffolliot. That'll come, perhaps . . . later. A bit of a tomboy she's bin, but she's settling down." "I suppose she is nearly grown up?"