Plenty more of it had come into their work-shops.  Tools to be used on the estate, garden implements, wheelbarrows, lawn rollers, things needed about the house, stables, and cottages, were to be attended to.  The church roof was being repaired.  Taking all these things and the “doing up” of the Court itself, there was more work than the village could manage, and carpenters, bricklayers, and decorators were necessarily brought from other places.  Still Joe Buttle and Sim Soames were allowed to lead in all such things as lay within their capabilities.  It was they who made such a splendid job of the entrance gates and the lodges.  It was astonishing how much was done, and how the sense of life in the air—­the work of resulting prosperity, made men begin to tread with less listless steps as they went to and from their labour.  In the cottages things were being done which made downcast women bestir themselves and look less slatternly.  Leaks mended here, windows there, the hopeless copper in the tiny washhouse replaced by a new one, chimneys cured of the habit of smoking, a clean, flowered paper put on a wall, a coat of whitewash—­they were small matters, but produced great effect.

Betty had begun to drop into the cottages, and make the acquaintance of their owners.  Her first visits, she observed, created great consternation.  Women looked frightened or sullen, children stared and refused to speak, clinging to skirts and aprons.  She found the atmosphere clear after her second visit.  The women began to talk, and the children collected in groups and listened with cheerful grins.  She could pick up little Jane’s kitten, or give a pat to small Thomas’ mongrel dog, in a manner which threw down barriers.

“Don’t put out your pipe,” she said to old Grandfather Doby, rising totteringly respectful from his chimney-side chair.  “You have only just lighted it.  You mustn’t waste a whole pipeful of tobacco because I have come in.”

The old man, grown childish with age, tittered and shuffled and giggled.  Such a joke as the grand young lady was having with him.  She saw he had only just lighted his pipe.  The gentry joked a bit sometimes.  But he was afraid of his grandson’s wife, who was frowning and shaking her head.

Betty went to him, and put her hand on his arm.

“Sit down,” she said, “and I will sit by you.”  And she sat down and showed him that she had brought a package of tobacco with her, and actually a wonder of a red and yellow jar to hold it, at the sight of which unheard-of joys his rapture was so great that his trembling hands could scarcely clasp his treasures.

“Tee-hee!  Tee-hee-ee!  Deary me!  Thankee—­thankee, my lady,” he tittered, and he gazed and blinked at her beauty through heavenly tears.