first-rate article. The horse was a high-stepper, such as are not to be
bought for a song; the turn-out was at the first glance perfect. But if
you looked keenly at the groom, there was a suspicion of the plough in his
face and attitude. He did not sit like a man to the manner born. He was
lumpy; he lacked the light, active style characteristic of the
thoroughbred groom, who is as distinct a breed as the thoroughbred horse.
The man looked as if he had been taken from the plough and was conscious
of it. His feet were in top-boots, but he could not forget the heavy
action induced by a long course of walking in wet furrows. The critics by
the hedge were not capable of detecting these niceties. The broad facts
were enough for them. There was the gentleman in his ulster, there was the
resplendent turn-out, there was the groom, and there was the thoroughbred
horse. The man's father drove their pigs to market, and they wanted to
know where he got the money from.

Meantime Mr. D----, having carelessly nodded, had gone on. Half a mile
farther some of his own fields were contiguous to the road, yet he did
not, after the fashion of the farmer generally, pause to gaze at them
searchingly; he went on with the same careless glance. This fact, which
the old-fashioned folk had often observed, troubled them greatly. It
seemed so unnatural, so opposite to the old ideas and ways, that a man
should take no apparent interest in his own farm. They said that Frank was
nothing of a farmer; he knew nothing of farming. They looked at his ricks;
they were badly built, and still worse thatched. They examined his
meadows, and saw wisps of hay lying about, evidence of neglect; the fields
had not been properly raked. His ploughed fields were full of weeds, and
not half worked enough. His labourers had acquired a happy-go-lucky style,
and did their work anyhow or not at all, having no one to look after them.
So, clearly, it was not Frank's good farming that made him so rich, and
enabled him to take so high and leading a position.