“HOW pleased the boy looks, to be sure!” observed Woodruffe to his wife, as his son Allan caught up little Moss (as Maurice had chosen to call himself before he could speak plain) and made him jump from the top of the drawers upon the chair, and then from the chair to the ground. “He is making all that racket just because he is so pleased he does not know what to do with himself.”

“I suppose he will forgive Fleming now for carrying off Abby,” said the mother. “I say, Allan, what do you think now of Abby marrying away from us?”

“Why, I think it’s a very good thing. You know she never told me that we should go and live where she lived, and in such a pretty place, too, where I may have a garden of my own, and see what I can make of it – all fresh from the beginning, as father says.”

“You are to try your hand at the business, I know,” replied the mother, “but I never heard your father, nor any one else, say that the place was a pretty one. I did not think new railway stations had been pretty places at all.”

“It sounds so to him, naturally,” interposed Woodruffe. “He hears of a south aspect, and a slope to the north for shelter, and the town seen far off; and that sounds all very pleasant. And then, there is the thought of the journey, and the change, and the fun of getting the ground all into nice order, and, best of all, the seeing his sister so soon again. Youth is the time for hope and joy, you know, love.”

And Woodruffe began to whistle, and stepped forward to take his turn at jumping Moss, whom he carried in one flight from the top of the drawers to the floor. Mrs. Woodruffe smiled, as she thought that youth was not the only season, with some people, for hope and joy.

Her husband, always disposed to look on the bright side, was particularly happy this evening. The lease of his market-garden ground was just expiring. He had prospered on it; and would have desired nothing better than to live by it as long as he lived at all. He desired this so much that he would not believe a word of what people had been saying for two years past, that his ground would be wanted by his landlord on the expiration of the lease, and that it would not be let again. His wife had long foreseen this; but not till the last moment would he do what she thought should have been done long before – offer to buy the ground. At the ordinary price of land, he could accomplish the purchase of it; but when he found his landlord unwilling to sell, he bid higher and higher, till his wife was so alarmed at the rashness, that she was glad when a prospect of entire removal opened. Woodruffe was sure that he could have paid off all he offered at the end of a few years; but his partner thought it would have been a heavy burden on their minds, and a sad waste of money; and she was therefore, in her heart, obliged to the landlord for persisting in his refusal to sell.

When that was settled, Woodruffe became suddenly sure that he could pick up an acre or two of land somewhere not far off. But he was mistaken; and, if he had not been mistaken, market-gardening was no longer the profitable business it had been, when it enabled him to lay by something every year. By the opening of a railway, the townspeople, a few miles off, got themselves better supplied with vegetables from another quarter. It was this which put it into the son-in-law’s head to propose the removal of the family into Staffordshire, where he held a small appointment on a railway. Land might be had at a low rent near the little country station where his business lay; and the railway brought within twenty minutes’ distance a town where there must be a considerable demand for garden produce. The place was in a raw state at present; and there were so few houses, that, if there had been a choice of time, the Flemings would rather have put off the coming of the family till some of the cottages already planned had been built; but the Woodruffes must remove in September, and all parties agreed that they should not mind a little crowding for a few months. Fleming’s cottage was to hold them all till some chance of more accommodation should offer.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Woodruffe, after standing for some time, half whistling and thinking, with that expression on his face which his wife had long learned to be afraid of, “I’ll write to-morrow – let’s see – I may as well do it to-night;” and he looked round for paper and ink. “I’ll write to Fleming, and get him to buy the land for me at once.”

“Before you see it?” said his wife, looking up from her stocking mending.

“Yes. I know all about it, as much as if I were standing on it this moment; and I am sick of this work – of being turned out just when I had made the most of a place, and got attached to it. I’ll make a sure thing of it this time, and not have such a pull at my heart-strings again. And the land will be cheaper now than later; and we shall go to work upon it with such heart, if it is our own! Eh?”

“Certainly, if we find, after seeing it, that we like it as well as we expect. I would just wait till then.”

“As well as we expect! Why, bless my soul! don’t we know all about it? It is not any land-agent or interested person, that has described it to us; but our own daughter and her husband; and do not they know what we want? The quantity at my own choice; the aspect capital; plenty of water (only too much, indeed); the soil anything but poor, and sand and marl within reach to reduce the stiffness; and manure at command, all along the railway, from half-a-dozen towns; and osier-beds at hand (within my own bounds if I like) giving all manner of convenience for fencing, and binding, and covering! Why, what would you have?”

“It sounds very pleasant, certainly.”

“Then, how can you make objections? I can’t think where you look, to find any objections?”

“I see none now, and I only want to be sure that we shall find none when we arrive.”

“Well! I do call that unreasonable! To expect to find any place on earth altogether unobjectionable! I wonder what objection could be so great as being turned out of one after another, just as we have got them into order. Here comes our girl. Well, Becky, I see how you like the news! Now, would not you like it better still if we were going to a place of our own, where we should not be under any landlord’s whims? We should have to work, you know, one and all. But we would get the land properly manured, and have a cottage of our own in time; would not we? Will you undertake the pigs, Becky?”

“Yes, father; and there are many things I can do in the garden too. I am old and strong, now; and I can do much more than I have ever done here.”

“Aye; if the land was our own,” said Woodruffe, with a glance at his wife. She said no more, but was presently up stairs putting Moss to bed. She knew, from long experience, how matters would go. After a restless night, Woodruffe spoke no more of buying the land without seeing it; and he twice said, in a meditative, rather than a communicative way, that he believed it would take as much capital as he had to remove his family, and get his new land into fit condition for spring crops.

II

“You may look out now for the place. Look out for our new garden. We are just there now,” said Woodruffe to the children as the whistle sounded, and the train was approaching the station. It had been a glorious autumn day from the beginning; and for the last hour, while the beauty of the light on fields and trees and water had been growing more striking, the children, tired with the novelty of all that they had seen since morning, had been dropping asleep. They roused up suddenly enough at the news that they were reaching their new home; and thrust their heads to the windows, eagerly asking on which side they were to look for their garden. It was on the south, the left-hand side; but it might have been anywhere, for what they could see of it. Below the embankment was something like a sheet of gray water, spreading far away.

“It is going to be a foggy night,” observed Woodruffe. The children looked into the air for the fog, which had always, in their experience, arrived by that way from the sea. The sky was all a clear blue, except where a pale green and a faint blush of pink streaked the west. A large planet beamed clear and bright; and the air was so transparent that the very leaves on the trees might almost be counted. Yet could nothing be seen below for the gray mist which was rising, from moment to moment.

Fleming met them as they alighted; but he could not stay till he had seen to the other passengers. His wife was there. She had been a merry-hearted girl; and now, still so young, as to look as girlish as ever, she seemed even merrier than ever. She did not look strong, but she had hardly thrown off what she called “a little touch of the ague;” and she declared herself perfectly well when the wind was anywhere but in the wrong quarter. Allan wondered how the wind could go wrong. He had never heard of such a thing before. He had known the wind too high, when it did mischief among his father’s fruit trees; but it had never occurred to him that it was not free to come and go whence and whither it would, without blame or objection.

“Come – come home,” exclaimed Mrs. Fleming, “Never mind about your bags and boxes! My husband will take care of them. Let me show you the way home.”

She let go the hands of the young brothers, and loaded them, and then herself, with parcels, that they might not think they were going to lose everything, as she said; and then tripped on before to show the way. The way was down steps, from the highest of which two or three chimney-tops might be seen piercing the mist which hid everything else. Down, down, down went the party, by so many steps that little Moss began to totter under his bundle.

“How low this place lies!” observed the mother.

“Why, yes;” replied Mrs. Fleming. “And yet I don’t know. I believe it is rather that the railway runs high.”

“Yes, yes; that is it,” said Woodruffe. “What an embankment this is! If this is to shelter my garden to the north – ”

“Yes, yes, it is. I knew you would like it,” exclaimed Mrs. Fleming. “I said you would be delighted. I only wish you could see your ground at once; but it seems rather foggy, and I suppose we must wait till the morning. Here we are at home.”

The travellers were rather surprised to see how very small a house this “home” was. Though called a cottage, it had not the look of one. It was of a red brick, dingy, though evidently new; and, to all appearance, it consisted of merely a room below, and one above. On walking round it, however, a sloping roof in two directions gave a hint of further accommodation.

When the whole party had entered, and Mrs. Fleming had kissed them all round, her glance at her mother asked, as plainly as any words, “Is not this a pleasant room?”

“A pretty room, indeed, my dear,” was the mother’s reply, “and as nicely furnished as one could wish.”

She did not say anything of the rust which her quick eye perceived on the fire-irons and the door-key, or of the damp which stained the walls just above the skirting-board. There was nothing amiss with the ceiling, or the higher parts of the wall, – so it might be an accident.

“But, my dear,” asked the mother, seeing how sleepy Moss looked, “Where are you going to put us all? If we crowd you out of all comfort, I shall be sorry we came so soon.”

As Mrs. Fleming led the way upstairs, she reminded her family of their agreement not to mind a little crowding for a time. If her mother thought there was not room for all the newly arrived in this chamber, they could fit out a corner for Allan in the place where she and her husband were to sleep.

“All of us in this room?” exclaimed Becky.

“Yes, Becky; why not? Here, you see, is a curtain between your bed and the large one; and your bed is large enough to let little Moss sleep with you. And here is a morsel of a bed for Allan in the other corner; and I have another curtain ready to shut it in.”

“But,” said Becky, who was going on to object. Her mother stopped her by a sign.

“Or,” continued Mrs. Fleming, “if you like to let Allan and his bed and curtain come down to our place, you will have plenty of room here; much more than my neighbors have, for the most part. How it will be when the new cottages are built, I don’t know. We think them too small for new houses; but, meantime, there are the Brookes sleeping seven in a room no bigger than this, and the Vines six in one much smaller.”

“How do they manage, now?” asked the mother. “In case of illness, say; and how do they wash and dress?”

“Ah! that is the worst part of it. I don’t think the boys wash themselves – what we should call washing – for weeks together; or at least only on Saturday nights. So they slip their clothes on in two minutes; and then their mother and sisters can get up. But there is the pump below for Allan, and he can wash as much as he pleases.”

It was not till the next day that Mrs. Woodruffe knew – and then it was Allan who told her – that the pump was actually in the very place where the Flemings slept, – close by their bed. The Flemings were, in truth, sleeping in an outhouse, where the floor was of brick, the swill-tub stood in one corner, the coals were heaped in another, and the light came in from a square hole high up, which had never till now been glazed. Plenty of air rushed in under the door, and yet some more between the tiles, – there being no plaster beneath them. As soon as Mrs. Woodruffe had been informed of this, and had stepped in, while her daughter’s back was turned, to make her own observations, she went out by herself for a walk, – so long a walk, that it was several hours before she reappeared, heated and somewhat depressed. She had roamed the country round, in search of lodgings; and finding none, – finding no occupier who really could possibly spare a room on any terms, – she had returned convinced that, serious as the expense would be, she and her family ought to settle themselves in the nearest town, – her husband going to his business daily by the third-class train, till a dwelling could be provided for them on the spot.

When she returned, the children were on the watch for her; and little Moss had strong hopes that she would not know him. He had a great cap of rushes on his head, with a heavy bulrush for a feather; he was stuck all over with water-flags and bulrushes, and carried a long osier wand, wherewith to flog all those who did not admire him enough in his new style of dress. The children were clamorous for their mother to come down, and see the nice places where they got these new playthings; and she would have gone, but that their father came up, and decreed it otherwise. She was heated and tired, he said; and he would not have her go till she was easy and comfortable enough to see things in the best light.

Her impression was that her husband was, more or less (and she did not know why), disappointed; but he did not say so. He would not hear of going off to the town, being sure that some place would turn up soon, – some place where they might put their heads at night; and the Flemings should be no losers by having their company by day. Their boarding all together, if the sleeping could but be managed, would be a help to the young people, – a help which it was pleasant to him, as a father, to be able to give them. He said nothing about the land that was not in praise of it. Its quality was excellent; or would be when it had good treatment. It would take some time and trouble to get it in order, – so much that it would never do to live at a distance from it. Besides, no trains that would suit him ran at the proper hours; so there was an end of it. They must all rough it a little for a time, and expect their reward afterwards.

There was nothing that Woodruffe was so hard to please in as the time when he should take his wife to see the ground. It was close at hand; yet he hindered her going in the morning, and again after their early dinner. He was anxious that she should not be prejudiced, or take a dislike at first; and in the morning, the fog was so thick that everything looked dank and dreary; and in the middle of the day, when a warm autumn sun had dissolved the mists, there certainly was a most disagreeable smell hanging about. It was not gone at sunset; but by that time Mrs. Woodruffe was impatient, and she appeared – Allan showing her the way – just when her husband was scraping his feet upon his spade, after a hard day of digging.

“There, now!” said he, good-humoredly, striking his spade into the ground, “Fleming said you would be down before we were ready for you; and here you are! – Yes, ready for you. There are some planks coming, to keep your feet out of the wet among all this clay.”

“And yours, too, I hope,” said the wife. “I don’t mind such wet, after rain, as you have been accustomed to; but to stand in a puddle like this is a very different thing.”

“Yes – so ’tis. But we’ll have the planks; and they will serve for running the wheelbarrow, too. It is too much for Allan, or any boy, to run the barrow in such a soil as this. We’ll have the planks first; and then we’ll drain, and drain, and get rare spring crops.”

“What have they given you this artificial pond for,” asked the wife, “if you must drain so much?”

“That is no pond. All the way along here, on both sides the railway, there is the mischief of these pits. They dig out the clay for bricks, and then leave the places – pits like this, some of them six feet deep. The railways have done a deal of good for the poor man, and will do a great deal more yet; but, at present, this one has left those pits.”

“I hope Moss will not fall into one. They are very dangerous,” declared the mother, looking about for the child.

“He is safe enough there, among the osiers,” said the father. “He has lost his heart outright to the osiers. However, I mean to drain and fill up this pit, when I find a good out-fall; and then we will have all high and dry, and safe for the children. I don’t care so much for the pit as for the ditches there. Don’t you notice the bad smell?”

“Yes, indeed, that struck me the first night.”

“I have been inquiring to-day, and I find there is one acre in twenty hereabouts occupied with foul ditches like that. And then the overflow from them and the pits, spoils many an acre more. There is a stretch of water-flags and bulrushes, and nasty coarse grass and rushes, nothing but a swamp, where the ground is naturally as good as this; and, look here! Fleming was rather out, I tell him, when he wrote that I might graze a pony on the pasture below, whenever I have a market-cart. I ask him if he expects me to water it here.”

So saying, Woodruffe led the way to one of the ditches which, instead of fences, bounded his land; and, moving the mass of weed with a stick, showed the water beneath, covered with a whitish bubbling scum, the smell of which was insufferable.

“There is plenty of manure there,” said Woodruffe; “that is the only thing that can be said for it. We’ll make manure of it, and sweep out the ditch, and deepen it, and narrow it, and not use up so many feet of good ground for a ditch that does nothing but poison us. A fence is better than a ditch any day. I’ll have a fence, and still save ten feet of ground, the whole way down.”

“There is a great deal to do here,” observed the wife.

“And good reward when it is done,” Woodruffe replied. “If I can fall in with a stout laborer, he and Allan and I can get our spring crops prepared for; and I expect they will prove the goodness of the soil. There is Fleming. Supper is ready, I suppose.”

The children were called, but both were so wet and dirty that it took twice as long as usual to make them fit to sit at table; and apologies were made for keeping supper waiting. The grave half-hour before Moss’s bed-time was occupied with the most solemn piece of instruction he had ever had in his life. His father carried him up to the railway, and made him understand the danger of playing there. He was never to play there. His father would go up with him once a day, and let him see a train pass; and this was the only time he was ever to mount the steps, except by express leave. Moss was put to bed in silence, with his father’s deep, grave voice, sounding in his ears.

“He will not forget it,” declared his father. “He will give us no trouble about the railway. The next thing is the pit. Allan, I expect you to see that he does not fall into the pit. In time, we shall teach him to take care of himself; but you must remember, meanwhile, that the pit is six feet deep – deeper than I am high; and that the edge is the same clay that you slipped on so often this morning.”

“Yes, father,” said Allan, looking as grave as if power of life and death were in his hands.

III

One fine morning in the next spring, there was more stir and cheerfulness about the Woodruffes’ dwelling than there had been of late. The winter had been somewhat dreary; and now the spring was anxious; for Woodruffe’s business was not, as yet, doing very well. His hope, when he bought his pony and cart, was to dispatch by railway to the town the best of his produce, and sell the commoner part in the country neighborhood, sending his cart round within the reach of a few miles. As it turned out, he had nothing yet to send to the town, and his agent there was vexed and displeased. No radishes, onions, early salads, or rhubarb were ready, and it would be some time yet before they were.

“I am sure I have done everything I could,” said Woodruffe to Fleming, as they both lent a hand to put the pony into the cart. “Nobody can say that I have not made drains enough, or that they are not deep enough; yet the frost has taken such a hold that one would think we were living in the north of Scotland, instead of in Staffordshire.”

“It has not been a severe season either,” observed Fleming.

“There’s the vexation,” replied Woodruffe. “If it had been a season which set us at defiance, and made all sufferers alike, one must just submit to a loss, and go on again, like one’s neighbors. But, you see, I am cut out, as my agent says, from the market. Everybody else has spring vegetables there, as usual. It is no use telling him that I never failed before. But I know what it is. It is yonder great ditch that does the mischief.”

“Why, we have nothing to do with that.”

“That is the very reason. If it was mine or yours, do you think I should not have taken it in hand long ago? All my draining goes for little while that shallow ditch keeps my ground a continual sop. It is all uneven along the bottom; – not the same depth for three feet together anywhere, and not deep enough by two feet in any part. So there it is, choked up and putrid; and, after an hour or two of rain, my garden gets such a soaking that the next frost is destruction.”

“I will speak about it again,” said Fleming. “We must have it set right before next winter.”

“I think we have seen enough of the uselessness of speaking,” replied Woodruffe, gloomily. “If we tease the gentry any more, they may punish you for it. I would show them my mind by being off, – throwing up my bargain at all costs, if I had not put so much into the ground that I have nothing left to move away with.”

“Don’t be afraid for me,” said Fleming, cheerfully. “It was chiefly my doing that you came here, and I must try my utmost to obtain fair conditions for you. We must remember that the benefit of your outlay has all to come.”

“Yes; I can’t say we have got much of it yet.”

“By next winter,” continued Fleming, “your privet hedges and screens will have grown up into some use against the frost; and your own drainage – . Come, come, Allan, my boy! be off! It is getting late.”

Allan seemed to be idling, re-arranging his bunches of small radishes, and little bundles of rhubarb, in their clean baskets, and improving the stick with which he was to drive; but he pleaded that he was waiting for Moss, and for the parcel which his mother was getting ready for Becky.

“Ah I my poor little girl!” said Woodruffe. “Give my love to her, and tell her it will be a happy day when we can send for her to come home again. Be sure you observe particularly, to tell us how she looks; and, mind, if she fancies anything in the cart, – any radishes, or whatever else, because it comes out of our garden, be sure you give it her. I wish I was going myself with the cart, for the sake of seeing Becky; but I must go to work. Here have I been all the while, waiting to see you off. Ah! here they come! you may always have notice now of who is coming by that child’s crying.”

“O, father! not always!” exclaimed Allan.

“Far too often, I’m sure. I never knew a child grow so fractious. I am saying, my dear,” to his wife, who now appeared with her parcel, and Moss in his best hat, “that boy is the most fractious child we ever had; and he is getting too old for that to begin now. How can you spoil him so?”

“I am not aware,” said Mrs. Woodruffe, her eyes filling with tears, “that I treat him differently from the rest; but the child is not well. His chilblains tease him terribly, and I wish there may be nothing worse.”

“Warm weather will soon cure the chilblains, and then I hope we shall see an end of the fretting. – Now, leave off crying this minute, Moss, or you don’t go. You don’t see me cry with my rheumatism, and that is worse than chilblains, I can tell you.”

Moss tried to stifle his sobs, while his mother put more straw into the cart for him, and cautioned Allan to be careful of him, for it really seemed as if the child was tender all over. Allan seemed to succeed best as comforter. He gave Moss the stick to wield, and showed him how to make believe to whip the pony, so that before they turned the corner, Moss was wholly engrossed with what he called driving.

“Yes, yes,” said Woodruffe, as he turned away to go to the garden, “Allan is the one to manage, him. He can take as good care of him as any woman without spoiling him!”

Mrs. Woodruffe submitted to this in silence; but with the feeling that she did not deserve it.

Becky had had no notice of this visit from her brothers; but no such visit could take her by surprise; for she was thinking of her family all day long, every day, and fancying she should see them whichever way she turned. It was not her natural destination to be a servant in a farm-house; she had never expected it, – never been prepared for it. She was as willing to work as any girl could be; and her help in the gardening was beyond what most women are capable of; but it was a bitter thing to her to go among strangers, and toil for them, when she knew that she was wanted at home by father and mother, and brothers, and just at present by her sister too; for Mrs. Fleming’s confinement was to happen this spring. The reason why Becky was not at home while so much wanted there was, that there really was no accommodation for her. The plan of sleeping all huddled together as they were at first would not do. The girl herself could not endure it; and her parents felt that she must be got out at any sacrifice. They had inquired diligently till they found a place for her in a farm-house, where the good wife promised protection, and care, and kindness; and fulfilled her promise to the best of her power.

“I hope they do well by you here, Becky,” asked Allan, when the surprise caused by his driving up with a dash had subsided, and everybody had retired, to leave Becky with her brothers for the few minutes they could stay. “I hope they are kind to you here.”

“O, yes, – very kind. And I am sure you ought to say so to father and mother.”

Becky had jumped into the cart, and had her arms round Moss, and her head on his shoulder. Raising her head, and with her eyes filling as she spoke, she inquired anxiously how the new cottages went on, and when father and mother were to have a home of their own again. She owned, but did not wish her father and mother to hear of it, that she did not like being among such rough people as the farm servants. She did not like some of the behavior that she saw; and, still less, such talk as she was obliged to overhear. When would a cottage be ready for them?

“Why, the new cottages would soon be getting on now,” Allan said; but he didn’t know, nobody fancied the look of them. He saw them just after the foundations were laid; and the enclosed parts were like a clay-puddle. He did not see how they were ever to be improved; for the curse of wet seemed to be on them, as upon everything about the Station. Fleming’s cottage was the best he had seen, after all, if only it was twice as large. If anything could be done to make the new cottages what cottages should be, it would be done: for everybody agreed that the railway gentlemen desired to do the best for their people, and to set an example in that respect; but it was beyond anybody’s power to make wet clay as healthy as warm gravel. Unless they could go to work first to dry the soil, it seemed a hopeless sort of affair.

“But, I say, Becky,” pursued Allan, “you know about my garden – that father gave me a garden of my own.”

Becky’s head was turned quite away; and she did not look round, when she replied,

“Yes; I remember. How does your garden get on?”

There was something in her voice which made her brother lean over and look into her face; and, as he expected, tears were running down her cheeks.

“There now!” said he, whipping the back of the cart with his stick; “something must be done, if you can’t get on here.”

“O! I can get on. Be sure you don’t tell mother that I can’t get on, or anything about it.”

“You look healthy, to be sure.”

“To be sure I am. Don’t say any more about it. Tell me about your garden.”

“Well: I am trying what I can make of it, after I have done working with father. But it takes a long time to bring it round.”

“What! is the wet there, too?”

“Lord, yes! The wet was beyond everything at first. I could not leave the spade in the ground ten minutes, if father called me, but the water was standing in the hole when I went back again. It is not so bad now, since I made a drain to join upon father’s principal one; and father gave me some sand, and plenty of manure; but it seems to us that manure does little good. It won’t sink in when the ground is so wet.”