Squire bosses it.  And you never saw anything like his accounts!  I have been trying to put some of them straight—­just those that concern the house and garden—­after six weeks’ acquaintance!  Odd, isn’t it?  He is like an irritable child with them.  And his agent, who is seventy, and bronchitic, is the greatest fool I ever saw.  He neglects everything. His accounts too, as far as I have inspected them, are disgraceful.  He does nothing for the farmers, and the farmers do exactly as they please with the land.

’Or did!  For now comes the rub.  Government is interfering, through the County Committee.  They are turning out three of Mr. Mannering’s farmers by force, because he won’t do it himself, and ploughing up the park.  I believe the steam tractor comes next week.  The Squire has been employing some new lawyers to find out if he can’t stop it somehow.  And each time he sees them he comes home madder than before.

’Of course it all comes from a passionate antagonism to the war.  He is not a pacifist exactly—­he is not a conscientious objector.  He is just an individualist gone mad—­an egotistical, hot-tempered man, with all the ideas of the old regime, who thinks he can fight the world.  I am often really sorry for him—­he is so preposterous.  But the muddle and waste of it all drives me crazy—­you know I always was a managing creature.

’But one thing is certain—­that he is a most excellent scholar.  I knew I had got rusty, but I didn’t know how rusty till I came to work for him.  He has a wonderful memory—­seems to know every Greek author by heart—­and a most delicate and unerring taste.  I thought I should find a mere dabbler—­an amateur.  And it takes all I know to do the drudgery work he gives me.  And then he is always coming down upon me.  It delights him to find me out in a howler—­makes him, in fact, quite good-tempered for twenty minutes.

’As to the rest of the family, there is a charming boy and girl—­twins of nineteen, the boy just off to an artillery camp after his cadet training; the girl extremely pretty and distinguished, and so far inclined to think me an intruder and a nuisance.  How to get round her I don’t exactly know, but I daresay I shall manage it somehow.  If she would only set up a love-affair I could soon get the whip-hand of her!

’Then there is the priceless butler, with whom I have already made friends.  I seem to have a taste for butlers, though I’ve never lived with one.  He is fifty-two and a volunteer, in stark opposition to the Squire, who jeers at him perpetually.  Forest takes it calmly, seems even in a queer way to be attached to his queer master.  But he never misses a drill for anybody or any weather, and when he’s out, the under-housemaid “buttles” for him like a lamb.  The fact is, of course, that he’s been here for twenty years, and the Squire couldn’t get on for a day without him,