This young lady, with her strange talk, was the new squire's daughter.

And the village had already made up its mind that Richard Boyce was "a poor sort," and "a hard sort" too, in his landlord capacity.

He wasn't going to be any improvement on his brother--not a haporth! What was the good of this young woman talking, as she did, when there were three summonses as he, Patton, heard tell, just taken out by the sanitary inspector against Mr.Boyce for bad cottages?
And not a farthing given away in the village neither, except perhaps the bits of food that the young lady herself brought down to the village now and then, for which no one, in truth, felt any cause to be particularly grateful.

Besides, what did she mean by asking questions about the poaching?
Old Patton knew as well as anybody else in the village, that during Robert Boyce's last days, and after the death of his sportsman son, the Mellor estate had become the haunt of poachers from far and near, and that the trouble had long since spread into the neighbouring properties, so that the Winterbourne and Maxwell keepers regarded it their most arduous business to keep watch on the men of Mellor.

Of course the young woman knew it all, and she and her father wanted to know more.