But though it was very pretty to watch her working for her very life, as if the maintenance of the household hung upon her labours, yet I was grieved for many reasons, and so was mother also.  In the first place, she was too fair and dainty for this rough, rude work; and though it made her cheeks so bright, it surely must be bad for her to get her little feet so wet.  Moreover, we could not bear the idea that she should labour for her keep; and again (which was the worst of all things) mother’s garden lay exposed to a dark deceitful coppice, where a man might lurk and watch all the fair gardener’s doings.  It was true that none could get at her thence, while the brook which ran between poured so great a torrent.  Still the distance was but little for a gun to carry, if any one could be brutal enough to point a gun at Lorna.  I thought that none could be found to do it; but mother, having more experience, was not so certain of mankind.

Now in spite of the floods, and the sloughs being out, and the state of the roads most perilous, Squire Faggus came at last, riding his famous strawberry mare.  There was a great ado between him and Annie, as you may well suppose, after some four months of parting.  And so we left them alone awhile, to coddle over their raptures.  But when they were tired of that, or at least had time enough to do so, mother and I went in to know what news Tom had brought with him.  Though he did not seem to want us yet, he made himself agreeable; and so we sent Annie to cook the dinner while her sweetheart should tell us everything.

Tom Faggus had very good news to tell, and he told it with such force of expression as made us laugh very heartily.  He had taken up his purchase from old Sir Roger Bassett of a nice bit of land, to the south of the moors, and in the parish of Molland.  When the lawyers knew thoroughly who he was, and how he had made his money, they behaved uncommonly well to him, and showed great sympathy with his pursuits.  He put them up to a thing or two; and they poked him in the ribs, and laughed, and said that he was quite a boy; but of the right sort, none the less.  And so they made old Squire Bassett pay the bill for both sides; and all he got for three hundred acres was a hundred and twenty pounds; though Tom had paid five hundred.  But lawyers know that this must be so, in spite of all their endeavours; and the old gentleman, who now expected to find a bill for him to pay, almost thought himself a rogue, for getting anything out of them.

It is true that the land was poor and wild, and the soil exceeding shallow; lying on the slope of rock, and burned up in hot summers.  But with us, hot summers are things known by tradition only (as this great winter may be); we generally have more moisture, especially in July, than we well know what to do with.  I have known a fog for a fortnight at the summer solstice, and farmers talking in church about it when they ought to be praying.  But it always contrives to come right in the end, as other visitations do, if we take them as true visits, and receive them kindly.