Don't bother too much.' She waved her hand to him as he made off, and stood watching him from the steps--a gentle, attaching figure, her fair hair and the pale oval of her face standing out against the panelled hall behind her.
Her father went his way down a long winding hill beyond his own grounds, along a country road lined with magnificent oaks, through a village where his practised eye noted several bad cottages with disapproval, till presently he slackened his horse's pace, as he passed an ill-looking farm about half a mile beyond the village.
'Not a decent gate in the whole place!' he said to himself with disgust.

'And the farm buildings only fit for a bonfire.

High time indeed that we made Mannering sit up!' He paused also to look over the neighbouring hedge at some fields literally choked with weeds.
'And as for Gregson--lazy, drunken fellow! Why didn't he set some village women on?
Just see what they've done on my place! Hullo, here he is! Now I'm in for it!' For he saw a slouching man coming rapidly towards him from the farmyard, with the evident intention of waylaying him.

The man's shabby, untidy dress and blotched complexion did not escape Sir Henry's quick eye.

'Seems to have been making a night of it,' was his inward comment.
'Good-day, Sir Henry,' said the farmer, laying a hand on Chicksands' bridle, 'I wanted a word with you, sir.