The Buccaneer Farmer | Page 4

wind had dropped, the sun was bright, and the trout would not rise. He felt rather injured, because he had paid for his attention to duty, when he joined his wife and daughter at tea on the lawn.
A copper beech threw a cool shadow across the small table and basket chairs; the china and silver were old and good. Beyond the belt of wavering shade, the recently mown grass gave out a moist smell in the hot sun. The grass grew fine and close, for the turf was old, but there were patches of ugly weeds. The borders by the house were thinly planted and the color plan was rude, but one could not do much with a rheumatic gardener and a boy. There used to be two men, but Mrs. Osborn had insisted on cutting wages down.
Across the yew hedge, the tarn sparkled like a mirror and on its farther side, where a clump of dark pines overhung a beach of silver sand, the hillslopes shone with yellow grass, relieved by the green of fern and belts of moss. The spot was picturesque; the old house, with its low, straight front and mullioned windows, round which creepers grew, had a touch of quiet beauty. Osborn was proud of Tarnside, although he sometimes chafed because he had not enough money to care for it as he ought.
By and by he glanced at his wife, who had silently filled the cups and was cutting cake. She was a thin, quiet woman, with a hint of reserve in her delicately molded face. Sometimes she tactfully exercised a restraining influence, but for the most part acquiesced, for she had found out, soon after her marriage, that her husband must not be opposed.
Grace, who sat opposite, had recently come home from school, and was marked by an independence somewhat unusual at Tarnside. She argued with Osborn and was firm when he got angry. Then she had a fresh enthusiasm for change and improvement and a generous faith in what she thought was good. Since Osborn was obstinately conventional, this sometimes led to jars.
"After all, I'm going to have the terrace made," he remarked, and waited for his wife's approval.
"Is it prudent?" she asked hesitatingly. "If I remember, you thought the work would cost too much when we talked about it last."
"It will cost very little. In fact, I imagine the haulage of the gravel and the slabs for the wall will cost nothing," Osborn replied. "Bell has promised to bring me all the stuff we'll need with his new trailer."
"Oh," said Grace, rather sharply, "I suppose this means you have given him the lease of the station coal yard? No doubt he offered to bring the gravel before you agreed. He's cunning and knew you wanted the terrace."
"I can't remember if he offered before or afterwards," Osborn replied, with a touch of embarrassment. "Anyhow, I don't think it's important, because I did not allow his offer to persuade me. For all that, it's some satisfaction to get the work done cheap."
Grace pondered. She was intelligent; contact with her school companions had developed her character, and she had begun to understand Osborn since she came home. She knew he was easily deceived and sometimes half-consciously deceived himself.
"No," she said, "I don't think the work will really be cheap. It's often expensive to take a favor from a man like Bell. He will find a means of making you pay."
"Ridiculous! Bell can't make me pay."
"Then he will make somebody else pay for what he does for you, and it's hardly honest to let him," Grace insisted.
Mrs. Osborn gave her a warning glance and Osborn's face got red.
"It's a new thing for a young girl to criticize her father. This is what comes of indulging your mother and making some sacrifice to send you to an expensive modern school! If I'd had my way, you would have gone to another, where they teach the old-fashioned virtues: modesty, obedience, and respect for parents."
Grace smiled, because she knew the school Osborn meant and the type it produced. She was grateful to her mother for a better start.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly, but with a hint of resolution. "I don't want to criticize, but Bell is greedy and cunning, and now he has got both coal yards will charge the farmers more than he ought. He has already got too large a share of all the business that is done in the dale."
"It's obvious that you have learned less than you think," Osborn rejoined, feeling that he was on safer ground. "You don't seem to understand that concentration means economy. Bell, for example, buys and stores his goods in large quantities, instead of handling a number of small lots at different times, which would cost him more."
"I can see that,"