Margaret Maliphant

								

With that he strode to the door and opened it.
"Meg, will you please come to me in my study in a quarter of an hour?"
said he, turning to me as he went out. "There are a few things in the
farm accounts that I think you might help me with."

CHAPTER VI.

I went into the sunlight and stood leaning upon the garden-hedge
looking out over the glittering plain of snow to the glittering blue
of the sea beyond. The whole scene was set with jewels of light, and
even the gray fortress in the marsh seemed to awaken for once out
of its sleep; but I was in no mood to laugh with the sunbeams, for
my heart was beating with angry thoughts. A bailiff, a manager for
Knellestone--and Knellestone that had been managed by nobody but its
own masters for three hundred years! It was impossible! Why, the very
earth would rise up and rebel! From where I stood I could see our
meadows down on the marsh, our fields away on the hills towards the
sunset, the pastures where our shepherds spent cold nights in huts
at the lambing-time, the land where our oxen drew the plough and our
laborers tilled the soil and harvested the ingatherings. Would the men
and the beasts work for the manager as they worked for us? Would the
land prosper for a stranger and a hireling, who would not care whether
the cattle lived or died, whether the seasons were kind or cruel,
whether the trees and the flowers flourished or pined away, who would
get his salary just the same, though the frost nipped the new crops,
though the wheat dried up for want of rain or rotted in the ear for
lack of sun, though the cows cast their calves and the lambs died at
the birth? How absurd, how ridiculous it was! Did it not show that it
had been suggested by one who took no interest in the land, but who let
it all out to others to care for? Of course this was some spendthrift
younger son of a ruined gentleman's family, or some idiot who had
failed at every other profession, and was to be sent here to ruin other
people without having any responsibility of his own--somebody to whom
the squire owed a duty or a favor. Perhaps a man who had never been on
a farm in his life, maybe had not even lived in the country at all.
In my childish anger I became utterly unreasonable, and gave vent in
my solitude to any absurd expressions that occurred to me. I smile to
myself as I remember the impotent rage of that afternoon. Indeed, I
think I hated the squire most thoroughly that day. It was the idea,
too, that I was being set at naught that added to my anger. Hitherto
it was I who had transmitted father's orders to the men whenever he
was laid by or busy; and, as I have said before, he often trusted me
to ride to the bank with money, and even to take stock of the goods
before sales and fairs came on. Of course I know now that I was worse
than useless to him. I was a clever girl enough, and dauntless in
the matter of fatigue or trouble, but I was entirely ignorant of the