of man
- as somebody calls the Christian - Young, the poet Young, I think - you know
Young? Well, now, Flavell in his shabby black gaiters, pleading that he thought
the Lord had sent him and his wife a good dinner, and he had a right to knock it
down, though not a mighty hunter before the Lord, as Nimrod was - I assure you
it was rather comic: Fielding would have made something of it - or Scott, now -
Scott might have worked it up. But really, when I came to think of it, I
couldn't help liking that the fellow should have a bit of hare to say grace
over. It's all a matter of prejudice - prejudice with the law on its side, you
know - about the stick and the gaiters, and so on. However, it doesn't do to
reason about things; and law is law. But I got Johnson to be quiet, and I hushed
the matter up. I doubt whether Chettam would not have been more severe, and yet
he comes down on me as if I were the hardest man in the county. But here we are
at Dagley's.«
    Mr. Brooke got down at a farmyard-gate, and Dorothea drove on. It is
wonderful how much uglier things will look when we only suspect that we are
blamed for them. Even our own persons in the glass are apt to change their
aspect for us after we have heard some frank remark on their less admirable
points; and on the other hand it is astonishing how pleasantly conscience takes
our encroachments on those who never complain or have nobody to complain for
them. Dagley's homestead never before looked so dismal to Mr. Brooke as it did
to-day, with his mind thus sore about the fault-finding of the Trumpet, echoed
by Sir James.
    It is true that an observer, under that softening influence of the fine arts
which makes other people's hardships picturesque, might have been delighted with
this homestead called Freeman's End: the old house had dormer-windows in the
dark-red roof, two of the chimneys were choked with ivy, the large porch was
blocked up with bundles of sticks, and half the windows were closed with grey
worm-eaten shutters about which the jasmine-boughs grew in wild luxuriance; the
mouldering garden wall with hollyhocks peeping over it was a perfect study of
highly-mingled subdued colour, and there was an aged goat (kept doubtless on
interesting superstitious grounds) lying against the open back-kitchen door.