Afterwards, long afterwards, Cicely could not recall with any exactness when she began to look at Upworthy with eyes from which the scales had fallen. Presently she beheld the beloved cottages through Miss Tiddle’s twinkling orbs. Little escaped them. Called upon to admire thatched roofs and walls brilliantly white against a background of emerald-green fields, Tiddy perpetrated sniffs.

Cicely said defiantly:

“They’re the prettiest cottages in the county.”

“In our cottages, Cis, Daddy and I look at the kiddies. If they’re all right, we’re satisfied.”

“Satisfied with rows of ugly brick houses with slate tiles ...?”

“Absolutely.”

“What’s the matter with our children?” asked Cicely.

Tiddy replied with imperturbable and exasperating good humour:

“You must find that out for yourself, old thing. It’s no use jawing at people. That only makes ’em the more obstinate. Sooner or later, if you keep your peepers peeled, you’ll catch on. I’m wondering just how long you will keep it up.”

“Keep what up?”

“Self-deception—humbugging your own powers of observation.”

Coming and going to the Manor, when off duty, the girls would drop into the cottages and pass the time of day with smiling and obsequious villagers. But their pleasant greetings failed to impress Sir Nathaniel’s daughter. It happened, shortly after Agatha’s arrival, that Cicely paid a visit to Timothy Farleigh, the typist’s uncle. Before she tapped on the door, Cicely spoke a word of warning to Miss Tiddle.

“I want to tell Timothy how well Agatha is doing, but ...”

“Yes?”

“Well, the old fellow has a grievance. Mrs. Farleigh is a dear. And you will admire the kitchen.”

They tapped and entered. Tiddy was agreeably surprised and delighted. The kitchen was charming; a quaint, old-fashioned room with a deep open hearth and ingle-nook. A broad seat semi-circled a deeply-recessed bay window, and above the seat was a ledge with flower-pots upon it. An oak dresser set forth to advantage some blue-and-white pottery. Hams hung from a big black rafter. Upon the walls gleamed an immense brass warming-pan and a brass preserving-dish which seemed to have survived the use and abuse of centuries. A large table was scrubbed immaculately white. There were plain Windsor chairs and a huge arm-chair facing the hearth. In this arm-chair sat Timothy Farleigh, reading a Sunday paper with horn spectacles upon his bony nose. He rose when the young ladies entered, and greeted them civilly but without the customary servility. In the ingle-nook Nick, the softy, was crouching, crooning to himself.

Timothy thanked Cicely for bringing him information about his niece. Tiddy eyed him critically noting his strong square chin, heavy brow and deep-set eyes. A curious light smouldered in them. He spoke in the West Country dialect still used in remote districts by the elder generation.

“Aggie be a fine young ’ooman, able, thank the Lard! to fend for herself. I be proud o’ she, a gert, understanding lass I calls ’er.”

“I have brought my friend, Miss Tiddle, to see you, Timothy. She comes from the Midlands, where folk are thick as bees in a hive.”

Timothy glanced with interest at Tiddy.

“Do they bide quiet in their hives, miss? I bain’t much of a scollard, but I reads my Sunday paper, I do, and folks in your parts seemin’ly be buzzin’ and swarmin’ like bees ready to leave old hive.”

“There is a good deal of that,” admitted Tiddy candidly.

“Ah-h-h!”

Timothy pressed his thin lips, as if fearing that buzzing might escape from him. He shrugged his heavy shoulders, warped by constant toil in the fields, and remained silent. Just then his wife bustled in, a frail, spindling little woman with worried eyes. She greeted Cicely, so Tiddy noticed, with genuine affection, and offered instantly a cup of tea. Her obvious desire to ingratiate herself with the quality seemed pathetic to the young woman from the Midlands.

“Stop your noise, Nicky,” said Mrs. Farleigh sharply. “You knows better nor that.”

“Let ’un bide,” growled Timothy.

Nick stared and then grinned at Miss Tiddle, offering slyly his customary greeting to strangers.

“I be soft, I be.”

“Don’t ’ee take no notice of him, miss.”

Cicely talked on cheerfully about Agatha till it was time to go. Outside Tiddy said sharply:

“What is this grievance?”

Reluctantly, Cicely told the tale of diphtheria and two graves in the churchyard. Tiddy refrained from comment. Crossing the village green, after five minutes with Mrs. Rockram, they encountered Nicodemus Burble, hearty and garrulous as ever.

“It do tickle me to death to see ’ee, miss,” he assured Cicely. “A fair stranger you be.”

“How is everything in the village, granfer?”

“We be gettin’ older, miss, and more rheumaticky. But I keeps on my old pins, I does, being scairt o’ takin’ to my bed wi no ’ooman to fend for me.”

“An old bachelor?” asked Tiddy.

“Lard love ’ee, miss, I ha’ buried two wives, and might ha’ taken a third, a very praper young wench, but too free wi’ her tongue like.”

“Was she?” asked Tiddy.

“Aye. Whatever do ’ee think she says to me, the lil’ besom, when I up and axed her to be number three?”

“I can’t imagine,” said Cicely.

Tiddy observed thoughtfully:

“She might have said a good deal.”

The ancient chuckled.

“‘Granfer,’ she says, ‘a man o’ your gert age ought to go to bed wi’ a candlestick.’”

Cicely threw back her head and laughed. Tiddy wanted more detail.

“And what did you reply to that, Mr. Burble?”

“Ah-h-h! I was too flambergasted, miss, for common speech, but a very notable answer blowed into my yed just one fornit arter. I can’t go to bed wi’ a candlestick, acause I ain’t got none, nary one.”

He hobbled on, still chuckling.

“They’re quite wonderful,” said Tiddy. “Prehistoric. How long will it last?”

Cicely frowned, anticipating criticism.

“I suppose you would like to see everything cut to pattern, with the colour out of the pattern, a drab monotony of millions doing and saying the same thing; no distinctions, no differences—ugh?”

“Is that your own, Cis?”

Cicely had to admit that she was quoting from the Morning Post.

Tiddy laughed at her, as usual.

“You Tories are always so extreme. Changes needn’t be violent, but they may be violent if you swells don’t climb down the pole a bit and get nearer facts as they are. That’s all. What a very horrid smell!”

Under the stronger beams of a May sun odours of pig were wafted on the breeze.

“I don’t mind the smell of pigs.”

“Does your mother ever notice it?”

“I don’t know.”

“If she kept away from her village I should understand, but she doesn’t.”

Cicely was sharp enough to explain.

“That’s it. If she kept away ...! Then she might notice. She has smelt these smells for thirty years. She says that a smell you can smell is not dangerous. Brian thinks just as she does.”

“France may take some dust out of his eyes.”

Retrenchment, expenses cut to the irreducible Saltaire minimum, was inscribed upon gates, fences, and buildings. Cicely had an illuminating word to say about the gates:

“Father said that he liked a gate that you could put a young horse at without running much risk of breaking your neck.”

“What a humane man!”

Cicely added pensively:

“When hounds run across Wilverley I look before I leap.”

“Ah! Then you do see the difference between Wilverley and Upworthy?”

Reluctantly, feeling rather disloyal, Cicely had to confess that the difference did obtrude itself. Since Arthur’s return, she had ridden out with him about once a week. A groom accompanied them. Arthur would dismount and take Cicely into his cottages, asking many questions, insisting upon truthful answers, checking, so to speak, the reports, written and spoken, of his agent, leaving nothing to chance or mischance. His actions as a landlord revealed him far more clearly to Cicely than the halting words with which at first he had tried to capture her affections. She began to wonder what Upworthy would look like under Wilverley management. If she married this good, capable fellow, would he put his stout shoulder to the wheel of a mother-in-law? Tentatively, with a faint flush upon her cheeks, she said to him:

“I wish, Arthur, that you could persuade Mother to make a few improvements at Upworthy.”

He replied, with a touch of irritation:

“Good heavens! As it is, I can’t find time to mind my own business. Lady Selina would resent any interference. I thought that Grimshaw——”

He broke off abruptly, realising that an indictment of Chandos methods had almost escaped him.

“Please go on. What did you expect from Mr. Grimshaw?”

Evading the direct question, she pressed him vehemently:

“I do so want to know what might be done. If it isn’t your business, it might be mine, mightn’t it?”

He eyed her keenly. Was she thinking of a dire possibility, the death of her brother? Her next words reassured him.

“You see, Arthur, Brian knows nothing about estate management. He’s a soldier, and I’m glad he is.”

“Perhaps you are sorry that I am not?”

She replied gracefully:

“But you are. You are fighting as hard as any man I know.”

“Thanks.” His voice softened. “What do you want to know?”

She picked her phrases carefully, and they had been prepared, pat to just such an opportunity.

“I want to know why things have drifted into the present pass. I want to know who is really responsible? And most of all I want to know if anything can be done.”

The sincerity in her voice, the trouble in her eyes, moved him poignantly. And this was the first appeal of weakness to strength always so irresistible and captivating. He answered her as sincerely, plunging headlong into the subject, speaking, however, with that tincture of exasperation which marred somewhat his efforts on public platforms. Knowledge is at heart intolerant of ignorance, but your silver-tongued orator would lose half his power if he betrayed this.

“I’ll do my best, Cicely. But I propose to leave your mother out of it. I can’t criticise her to you. And really she is the victim of circumstances almost beyond her control.”

“Almost?”

“I said almost. Something utterly unforeseen might change her point of view. She believes firmly that she is acting for the best. For the moment let us leave it at that. Unhappily, she has a bad bailiff. And your Inspector of Nuisances is in the hands of your Board of Guardians, small farmers who are terrified of improvements because it would mean a rise in rates. And then there’s Snitterfield——!”

“Dr. Snitterfield?”

“Your Health Officer, also in the hands of your Guardians, and elected by them. Snitterfield, the Inspector, and Gridley pursue a policy of masterly inactivity. Grimshaw found himself up against those three, up against vested interests, up against absurd medical etiquette. I rather hoped that he would call upon the Chief Medical Officer of the County, a good man, but that would have meant an appalling rumpus. Grimshaw would have had to prove his case up to the hilt; no easy matter. Probably he would have hostilised your mother. Old Pawley, perhaps, restrained him. I don’t know. I’m not surprised that Grimshaw bolted.”

“He didn’t.”

“I felt at the time that I should have bolted. Grimshaw told me that just such intolerable conditions drove him out of Essex and Poplar.”

“Mr. Grimshaw went to France because he was needed there. I am sure of that.”

“I daresay. Anyway, he left Upworthy. Where was I? Oh, yes. I can’t tell you where responsibility begins or ends. Our land system howls to heaven for reform. And I can’t tell you what ought to be done at Upworthy. Tinkering with improvements is bad business. For the present, at any rate, until this accursed war ends, Lady Selina must be left alone. I—I’m sorry I spoke with such heat.”

“I am much obliged to you,” said Cicely.