Margaret Maliphant

								

from the Manor, where a belt of trees had been allowed to grow up and
shut out the view. But the rooks loved that lordly belt of trees, and I
think that, as a child, I envied the squire the rooks. If I did, it was
the only thing I ever did envy him.
As the child of the squire's tenant, and proud of my family pride, it
was born in me rather to dislike him than otherwise for his fine old
house and his many acres. But this was only when something occurred to
remind me of these sentiments--to wit, mother's desire for a marriage
between my sister and the village big-wig. Otherwise I did not think of
him in this light at all, but rather as the provider of the only treats
that ever came our way in that quiet life; for it was he who would make
up a party to take us to the travelling shows in the little town when
they came by, or even sometimes to the larger seaport ten miles off. I
can still remember the school feasts at the Manor when we were little
girls, and the squire had but just come into his own; and how, when the
village tea and cake had been handed round, he would take us two all
over the grounds alone, and give us lovely posies of hot-house flowers
to take back to the Grange parlor.
I can even recollect a ride on his back round the field when I tried
to catch the pony, and how wildly I laughed all the time, making the
meadows ring with my merriment; but that must have been when I was
scarcely more than five years old. Since then he had been a husband and
a father, and now he was a widower, and in my eyes quite an old man;
although, I suppose, he can have been little more than five-and-thirty.

I do not remember Mrs. Broderick. I asked mother about her once, and
she told me that she had died when I was scarcely ten years old. And
from our old servant, Deborah, I had further gleaned that it was in
giving birth to a little son, who had died a year after her, and that
mother could not bear to speak of it, because it was just at the same
time that we lost our little brother John. Both children had died of
scarlet-fever, and mother had nursed the squire's motherless boy before
her own. I suppose that was why the squire was always so tender and
reverential to her.
I know I was sorry for the squire; for it seemed hard he should have no
heir to all his acres, and should have to live in that big house all
alone. But he did not seem to mind it much: he was always cheery; his
fair, fresh face always with a smile on it; his frank, blue eyes always
bright. It did one good to see him; it was like a breath of fresh air.
I think everybody felt the same thing about him. It was not only that
he was generous, a just landlord, "always as good as his word"--there
was something more in it than that; there was something that made
everybody love him, apart from anything that he did. And as I look back
now to the past, I can see that the squire can have had no easy time of
it among the people. He had a thorn in the flesh, and that thorn was my