“It is a handsome offer, sir, and a kind offer and like yourself, sir, but transplanting one of us,” continued George, “dear me, sir, it’s like taking up an oak tree thirty years in the ground—­besides—­besides—­did you ever notice my cousin, Susanna, sir?”

“Notice her! why, do you think I am a heathen, and never go to the parish church?  Miss Merton is a lovely girl; she sits in the pew by the pillar.”

“Isn’t she, sir?” said George.

Mr. Winchester endeavored to turn this adverse topic in his favor; he made a remark that produced no effect at the time.  He said, “People don’t go to Australia to die—­they go to Australia to make money, and come home and marry—­and it is what you must do—­this “Grove” is a millstone round your neck.  Will you have a cigar, farmer?”

George consented, premising, however, that hitherto he had never got beyond a yard of clay, and after drawing a puff or two he took the cigar from his mouth, and looking at it said, “I say, sir! seems to me the fire is uncommon near the chimbly.”  Mr. Winchester laughed; he then asked George to show him the blacksmith shop.  “I must learn how to shoe a horse,” said the honorable Frank.

“Well, I never!” thought George.  “The first nob in the country going to shoe a horse,” but with his rustic delicacy he said nothing, and led Mr. Winchester to the blacksmith’s shop.

While this young gentleman is hammering nails into a horse’s hoof, and Australia into an English farmer’s mind, we must introduce other personages.

Susanna Merton was beautiful and good.  George Fielding and she were acknowledged lovers, but marriage was not spoken of as a near event, and latterly old Merton had seemed cool whenever his daughter mentioned the young man’s name.

Susanna appeared to like George, though not so warmly as he loved her; but at all events she accepted no other proffers of love.  For all that she had, besides a host of admirers, other lovers besides George; and what is a great deal more singular (for a woman’s eye is quick as lightning in finding out who loves her), there was more than one of whose passion she was not conscious.

William Fielding, George’s brother, was in love with his brother’s sweetheart, but though he trembled with pleasure when she was near him, he never looked at her except by stealth; he knew he had no business to love her.

On the morning of our tale Susan’s father, old Merton, had walked over from his farm to “The Grove,” and was inspecting a field behind George’s house, when he was accosted by his friend, Mr. Meadows, who had seen him, and giving his horse to a boy to hold had crossed the stubbles to speak to him.

Mr. Meadows was not a common man, and merits some preliminary notice.

He was what is called in the country “a lucky man”; everything he had done in life had prospered.

The neighbors admired, respected, and some of them even hated this respectable man, who had been a carter in the midst of them, and now at forty years of age was a rich corn-factor and land-surveyor.