Margaret Maliphant

								

out-of-doors.
An east wind blew from the sea, and the marsh was bleak, though
the lengthening shadows lay in soft tones across its crude spring
greenness. The sun shone, and the thorn-trees that were abloom by
the dikes made white spots along their straightness--softer memories
of the snow that had so lately vanished, kindly promise of spring to
come. Under the apple-trees, heavy with blossom, the air was blue
above the vivid emerald of the springing grass, and all around us
slenderly sturdy gray trunks and angular boughs, softened by a wealth
of rose-flushed flower, made delicate patterns upon the sky or against
the glittering sea-line beyond the marsh.
But a spring scene, with its frank, passionless beauty, its tenderness
that is all promise and no experience, its arrogance of coming life,
does sometimes put one out of heart with one's self, I think, although
it should not have had that effect on one who stood in the same
relation to life as did the spring to the year. Anyhow, I was not in
my most cheerful frame of mind that day--not quite so arrogant and
sanguine myself as was my wont.
Since the day when Captain Forrester had left the village three weeks
ago, things had not gone to my liking. In the first place, I was not
satisfied with this engagement of a year's standing, that was to be
kept a profound secret from every one around. I thought it was not fair
to Joyce. And then, and alas! I fear an even more active cause in my
depression of spirits--Mr. Trayton Harrod had been engaged as bailiff
to Knellestone farm!
Yes; never should I have expected it. It was too horrible, but it was
true. Father and mother had gone up to meet him at dinner at the Manor
two days after the captain's departure, and father had been forced to
confess that he was a quiet, sensible, straightforward fellow, without
any nonsense about him, and that there was no doubt that he knew what
he was about.
It was very mortifying to me to hear father speak of him in that way,
when I had quite made up my mind that he was sure not to know what he
was about. But it seems that I was curiously mistaken upon this point.
Far from being a mere amateur at the business, he had been carefully
educated for it at the Agricultural College at Ashford. His father
had been of opinion that his own ventures had failed because of a too
superficial knowledge of the subject--a knowledge only derived from
natural mother-wit and practical observation, and he wished his son to
labor under no such disadvantages.
I fancy Mr. Harrod's father had been, as the country-folk say, "a cut
above his neighbors" in culture and social standing, and had taken to
farming as a speculation when other things had failed. But of course
this was no reason why his son should not make a good farmer, since he
had been carefully educated to the business.
He was not wanting in practical experience either. He had done all