From the Park, Dr. Osborne had driven his very decorous little four-wheeler to Woolgreaves, the residence of the Creswells, his other great patients, and there he had given a modified version of his story, with a very much modified result. For old Mr. Creswell was away in France, and neither of the two young ladies was of an age to feel much sympathy, unless with their intimate relations, and they had been educated abroad, and seen but little of the Helmingham folk; and as for Tom Creswell, he was the imp of the school, having all Sam Baker's love of mischief without any of his good heart, and would not have oared who was ill or who died, provided illness or death afforded occasion for slacking work and making holiday. Every one else in the parish was grieved at the news. The rector--bland, polished, and well endowed with worldly goods--had been most actively compassionate towards his less fortunate brother; the farmers, who looked upon "Master Ashurst" as a marvel of book-learning, the labourers, who had consented to the removal of the village sports, held from time immemorial on the village green, to a remote meadow, whence the noise could not penetrate to the sick man's room, and who had considerately lowered the matter as well as the manner of their singing as they passed the schoolhouse at night in jovial chorus--all these people pitied the old man dying, and the old wife whom he would leave behind. They did not say much about the daughter; when they referred to her it was generally to the effect that she would manage tolerably well for herself, for "she were a right plucked un, Miss Marian were."