292 FIELD AND HEDGEROW, 



from the downs : it was old Hobbes's, whose affairs he 

 had known these forty years. Another, with wheat, was 

 Lambourne's team : he lost heavily in 1879, the wet 

 year. The family and business concerns of every man 

 of any substance were as well known to the squire as if 

 they had been written in a chronicle. So, too, he knew 

 the family tendency, as it were, of the cottagers. So 

 and So's lads were always tall, another's girls always 

 tidy. If you employed a member of this family, you 

 were sure to be well served ; if of another, you were sure 

 to be cheated in some way. Men vary like trees : an 

 ash sapling is always straight, the bough of an oak 

 crooked, a fir full of knots. A man, said the squire, 

 should be straight like a gun. This section of the high- 

 way gave him the daily news of the village as the daily 

 papers give us the news of the world. About two 

 hundred yards from the window the row of limes began, 

 each tree as tall and large as an elm, having grown to 

 its full natural size. The last of the row came very near 

 obstructing the squire's line of sight, and it once chanced 

 that some projecting branches by degrees stretched out 

 across his field of view. This circumstance caused him 

 much mental trouble ; for, having all his life consistently 

 opposed any thinning out or trimming of trees, he did 

 not care to issue an order which would almost confess 

 a mistake. Besides which, why only these particular 

 branches? — the object would be so apparent. The 

 squire, while conversing with Ettles, twice, as if uncon- 

 sciously, directed his steps beneath these limes, and, 

 striking the offending boughs with his stick, remarked 

 that they grew extremely fast. But the keeper, usually 

 so keen to take a hint, only answered that the lime was 

 the quickest wood to grow of which he knew. In his 

 heart he enjoyed the squire's difficulty. Finally the 



