But he had lived all his days at Bragton
Park, and his figure had been familiar to all eyes in the High
Street of Dillsborough and at the front entrance of the Bush.
People still spoke of old Mr. Reginald Morton as though his death
had been a sore loss to the neighbourhood.
And there were in the country round sundry yeomen, as they ought to
be called,--gentlemen-farmers as they now like to style
themselves,--men who owned some acres of land, and farmed these
acres themselves. Of these we may specially mention Mr. Lawrence
Twentyman, who was quite the gentleman-farmer. He possessed over
three hundred acres of land, on which his father had built an
excellent house. The present Mr. Twentyman, Lawrence Twentyman,
Esquire, as he was called by everybody, was by no means unpopular
in the neighbourhood. He not only rode well to hounds but paid
twenty-five pounds annually to the hunt, which entitled him to feel
quite at home in his red coat. He generally owned a racing colt or
two, and attended meetings; but was supposed to know what he was
about, and to have kept safely the five or six thousand pounds
which his father had left him. And his farming was well done; for
though he was, out-and-out, a gentleman-farmer, he knew how to get
the full worth in work done for the fourteen shillings a week which
he paid to his labourers,--a deficiency in which knowledge is the
cause why gentlemen in general find farming so expensive an
amusement.
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