The story of the Leyburns always seems to me typical of many things.' Robert looked inquiry, and the vicar, sitting down--having first picked up his wife's ball of wool as a peace-offering, which was loftily accepted--launched into a narrative which way be here somewhat condensed.
The Leyburns' grandfather, it appeared, had been a typical north-country peasant--honest, with strong passions both of love and hate, thinking nothing of knocking down his wife with the poker, and frugal in all things save drink.

Drink, however, was ultimately his ruin, as it was the ruin of most of the Cumberland statesmen.

'The people about here' said the vicar, 'say he drank away an acre a year.

He had some fifty acres, and it took about thirty years to beggar him.' Meanwhile, this brutal, rollicking, strong-natured person had sons and daughters--plenty of them.

Most of them, even the daughters, were brutal and rollicking too.