102 IDLEHURST : 



sits Avery, an odd figure, dark-faced and keen-eyed, 

 clad in torn and dirty frock, quaintly reigning among 

 all these remnants of consequence and country state, 

 and these solid comforts of the modern farm. As I 

 came in, old Tomsett, who does odd jobs in the farm, 

 hobbled in from the back passage with a message 

 from the fields about mangold seed. The master 

 gave his orders, not unkindly, but with the touch of 

 superiority inevitable perhaps from a man who has 

 both with honesty and credit made himself a place 

 in the world, to his fellow who, after sixty years of 

 work, is something less than when he began. Avery 

 began at the bottom of the hill, and found rough 

 places enough ; but to-day he is his own man, a 

 person in the parish, well-to-do, safely planted beyond 

 any thought of the Union or the Court. I know him 

 for a clear-headed, well-balanced old man, whose bank- 

 book is no idol to him ; who can turn at times, with 

 no touch of unreality, simply and gravely, to matters 

 which should grow into a man's last decade. From 

 his original eighteenpence a week as carter-boy he 

 rose by steady work, steady as poor Tomsett's, but 

 ordered by strong will and foresight, to "good 

 money ; " he kept his savings ; married prosperously ; 

 ventured when the chance came on a little farm. He 

 taught his boys to be worth a couple of labourers 



