Margaret Maliphant

								

than she did, and would probably consider that he was raising her by
the marriage, which my pride resented. For, after all, it was only
what the world considered a better position; he owned the land that we
worked. But the land had only been bought by his ancestors; whereas our
forefathers had owned it for more than two hundred years before that,
so that we considered that we were of the finer stock.
As I set this down now in black and white I smile to myself; it
represents so very badly the real relations that existed between our
two families, for the man of whom I speak has always been to us the
best and stanchest of friends, and even at that time there was hearty
simple intercourse between us that was quite uninfluenced by difference
of rank or party-spirit. But the words express a certain side of our
feelings, especially a certain side of my own particular feelings, and
therefore they shall stand.
The man whom mother hoped Joyce might marry was Squire Broderick. Ever
since we girls could remember, he had been squire at the big house, for
his father had died when he was scarcely twenty-one, and from that time
he had been master of the thousand rooks that used to fly across the
marsh at even, to their homes in the beeches and elms that sheltered
the Manor from the sea-gales.
I remember thinking when I was a child that it was very strange the
rooks should always fly to Squire Broderick's trees rather than to
ours. For we had trees too, although not so many nor so big, and our
house only stood at the other end of the hill, that sloped down on both
sides into the marsh. His house was large and square and regular--a red
brick Elizabethan house--and had a great many more windows and chimneys
than ours had, and a great many more flower-beds on the lawn that
looked out across the marsh to the sea.
But although the Grange had been often added to in the course of its
history, and was therefore irregular in shape and varied in color,
according to the time that the stone had stood the weather, or to the
mosses and ivy that clung to its gray walls, I am sure that it was just
as fine an old structure in its way, with its high-pitched tiled roof
and the lattice-windows, that only looked like eyes in the empty spaces
of solid stone.
We certainly had a better view than the squire. From the low windows
of the front parlor we could see the red-roofed town rise, like a
sentry-tower out of the plain, some three miles away; and, beyond
the ruin of the round stone fortress, lying like a giant asleep in
the tawny marsh-land, we looked across the wide stretch of flat
pasture-land to the storms and the blue of the sea in the distance.
I do not suppose that I was conscious of the strange beauty of this
marsh-land as I am conscious of it now; but I know that I loved
it--though people do say that country-folk have no admiration of
nature--and I know that I was glad that we saw more of it than they did