He told us that you had offered to set him up on a farm, but he is quite right to say no.

I don't say that if it had been with somebody else, his mother and I might not have felt rather sore that our eldest boy should have taken to service; but, of course, it is different with you, Squire.
It is only natural that a Lechmere should serve a Mallett, seeing that our fathers have been your fathers' tenants for hundreds of years, so that even if all this had not happened we should not have minded.

As it is, we are proud that he is with you; and it seems natural that, after wandering about the world and fighting with those black villains out there, he should never be content to go on as he was before, or to settle down to farming." "It is like man like master, in this case," Mallett laughed.

"After I have once been over the estate, and seen all the tenants, and learned that everyone is satisfied and everything going on well, I shall very soon begin to feel restless, and shall be running off somewhere.

You see, I have never been broken in to a country life.
I have no idea of becoming an absentee; but I think a month or two together will be as much as I can stand, at any rate as long as I am a bachelor." "That is just what I was saying, Squire," the farmer's wife said, speaking for the first time--for during the first portion of the conversation she had been crying quietly, and had since been busying herself in placing decanters and glasses and a huge homemade cake on the table.