Another, with wheat, was Lambourne's team: he lost heavily in
1879, the wet year. The family and business concerns of every man of any
substance were as well known to the squire as if they had been written in
a chronicle. So, too, he knew the family tendency, as it were, of the
cottagers. So and So's lads were always tall, another's girls always
tidy. If you employed a member of this family, you were sure to be well
served; if of another, you were sure to be cheated in some way. Men vary
like trees: an ash sapling is always straight, the bough of an oak
crooked, a fir full of knots. A man, said the squire, should be straight
like a gun. This section of the highway gave him the daily news of the
village as the daily papers give us the news of the world. About two
hundred yards from the window the row of limes began, each tree as tall
and large as an elm, having grown to its full natural size. The last of
the row came very near obstructing the squire's line of sight, and it
once chanced that some projecting branches by degrees stretched out
across his field of view. This circumstance caused him much mental
trouble; for, having all his life consistently opposed any thinning out
or trimming of trees, he did not care to issue an order which would
almost confess a mistake. Besides which, why only these particular
branches?--the object would be so apparent. The squire, while conversing
with Ettles, twice, as if unconsciously, directed his steps beneath these
limes, and, striking the offending boughs with his stick, remarked that
they grew extremely fast.
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