would all look very nice when it was done, and would cost little.  Then the bedrooms.  She had brought with her some rolls of flowery paper.  She ran to fetch them from the wagonette, and pinned some pieces against the wall.  The larger room with the south aspect should be Janet’s.  She would take the north room for herself.  She saw them both in her mind’s eye already comfortably furnished; above all fresh and bright.  There should be no dirt or dinginess in the house, if she could help it.  In the country whitewash and distemper are cheap.

Then Hastings followed her about through the farm buildings, where her quick eye, trained in modern ways, perceived a number of small improvements to be made that he would never have noticed.  She was always ready, he saw, to spend money on things that would save labour or lessen dirt.  But she was not extravagant, and looking through the list of her directions and commissions, as he hastily jotted them down, he admitted to himself that she seemed to know what she was about.  And being an honest man himself, and good-tempered, though rather shy and dull, he presently recognized the same qualities of honesty and good temper in her; and took to her.  Insensibly their tone to each other grew friendly.  Though he was temporarily in the landlord’s employ, he had been for some years in the service of the Wellin family.  Half-consciously he contrasted Miss Henderson’s manner to him with theirs.  In his own view he had been worse treated than an ordinary farm labourer throughout his farming life, though he had more education, and was expected naturally to have more brains and foresight than the labourer.  He was a little better paid; but his work and that of his wife was never done.  He had got little credit for success and all the blame for failure.  And the Wellin women-folk had looked down on his wife and himself.  A little patronage sometimes, and worthless gifts, that burnt in the taking; but no common feeling, no real respect.  But Miss Henderson was different.  His rather downtrodden personality felt a stimulus.  He began to hope that when she came into possession she would take him on.  A woman could not possibly make anything of Great End without a bailiff!

Her “nice” looks, no doubt, counted for something.  Her face was, perhaps, a little too full for beauty—­the delicately coloured cheeks and the large smiling mouth.  But her brown eyes were very fine, with very dark pupils, and marked eyebrows; and her nose and chin, with their soft, blunted lines, seemed to promise laughter and easy ways.  She was very lightly and roundly made; and everything about her, her step, her sunburn, her freckles, her evident muscular strength, spoke of open-air life and physical exercise.  Yet, for all this general aspect of a comely country-woman, there was much that was sharply sensitive and individual in the face.  Even a stranger might well feel that its tragic, as well as its humorous or tender possibilities, would have to be reckoned with.