“I wonder,” said one to another, “if Rexford had an idea in coming here that he would marry his daughters easily.  It’s a natural thing, you know, when one hears of the flower of British youth leaving England for the Colonies, to imagine that, in a place like this, girls would be at a premium.  I did.  When we came out I said to my wife that when our little girls grew up they might pick and choose for themselves from among a dozen suitors, but—­well, this isn’t just the locality for that, is it?”

Both men laughed a little.  They knew that, however difficult it might be to find the true explanation of the fact, the fact remained that there were no young men in Chellaston, that boys who grew up there went as inevitably elsewhere to make their fortunes as they would have done from an English country town.

Among the ladies who came to see Mrs. Rexford and count her children, the feeling concerning her was more nearly allied to kindly commiseration than she would at all have liked had she known it.  They said that Captain Rexford might succeed if his wife and daughters—­Each would complete the conditional clause in her own way, but it was clear to the minds of all that the success of the Rexford farm would depend to a great extent upon the economy and good management practised in the house.

Now the Rexfords, man, woman, and child, had come with brave hearts, intending to work and to economise; yet they found what was actually required of them different from all that their fancy had pictured; and their courage, not being obliged to face those dangers to which they had adjusted it, and being forced to face much to which it was not adjusted, suffered shock, and took a little time to rally into moderate animation.

At the end of their weary journey they had found themselves in a large wooden house, not new by any means, or smart in any of its appointments; and, as convenience is very much a matter of custom, it appeared to them inconvenient—­a house in which room was set against room without vestige of lobby or passage-way, and in which there were almost as many doors to the outside as there were windows.  They had bought it and its furniture as a mere adjunct to a farm which they had chosen with more care, and when they inspected it for the first time their hearts sank somewhat within them.  Captain Rexford, with impressive sadness, remarked to his wife that there was a greater lack of varnish and upholstery and of traces of the turning lathe than he could have supposed possible in—­“furniture.”  But his wife had bustled away before he had quite finished his speech.  Whatever she might feel, she at least expressed no discouragement.  Torture does not draw from a brave woman expressions of dismay.