There was one daughter, and she, too, was out at work.  She was housekeeper to an infirm old farmer; that is to say, she superintended the dairy and the kitchen, and received hardly as much as a cook in a London establishment.  Like the sons, she was finely developed physically, and had more of the manners of a lady than seemed possible under the circumstances.

Her father’s principles of farming were much the same as his plan of housekeeping and family government.  It consisted of never spending any money.  He bought no machines.  The reaping machine was the one exception, and a bitter point with the old man.  He entered on no extensive draining works, nor worried his landlord to begin them.  He was content with the tumble-down sheds till it was possible to shelter cattle in them no longer.  Sometimes he was compelled to purchase a small quantity of artificial manure, but it was with extreme reluctance.  He calculated to produce sufficient manure in the stalls, for he kept a large head of fattening cattle, and sheep to the greatest extent possible.  He would rather let a field lie fallow, and go without the crop from it, till nature had restored the exhausted fertility, than supply that fertility at the cost of spending money.  The one guiding motto of his life was ’Save, not invest.’  When once he got hold of a sovereign he parted with it no more; not though all the scientific professors in the world came to him with their analyses, and statistics, and discoveries.  He put it in the bank, just as his father would have put it into a strong box under his bed.  There it remained, and the interest that accrued, small as it was, was added to it.

Yet it was his pride to do his land well.  He manured it well, because he kept cattle and sheep, especially the latter, to the fullest capacity of his acreage; and because, as said before, he could and did afford to let land lie fallow when necessary.  He was in no hurry.  He was not anxious for so much immediate percentage upon an investment in artificial manure or steam-plough.  He might have said, with a greater man, ’Time and I are two.’  It was Time, the slow passage of the years, that gave him his profit.  He was always providing for the future; he was never out of anything, because he was never obliged to force a sale of produce in order to get the ready cash to pay the bank its interest upon borrowed money.  He never borrowed; neither did he ever make a speech, or even so much as attend a farmers’ club, to listen to a scientific lecture.  But his teams of horses were the admiration of the country side—­no such horses came into the market town.  His rent was paid punctually, and always with country bank-notes—­none of your clean, newfangled cheques, or Bank of England crisp paper, but soiled, greasy country notes of small denomination.