"Do you know him?" emphatically asked the galleyman.He watched Grandturzel's developments with a stern and anxious eye, and kept pace with them as well as he could. The farm consisted of about fifty-five acres of grass and tilth, apart from the forty acres of Boarzell, which neither Realf nor his father had ever attempted to cultivate, using them merely for fuel and timber, or as pasturage for the ewes when their lambs were taken from them. Old Realf had allowed the place to acquire a dilapidated rakish look, but his son at once began to smarten it up. He tarred the two oast-houses till they shone blue with the reflected sky, he painted his barn doors green, and re-roofed the Dutch Barn with scarlet tiles that could be seen all the way from Tiffenden Hill. He enriched his poultry-yard with a rare strain of Orpington, and was the only farmer in the district besides Reuben to do his reaping and hay-making by machinery."Well, he's swooneded away, anyhow. Can't you do something to m?ake him sensible?"
"Again I hope I am not in your way. I've been over to see the carter's widow at Socknershhe died two days ago, you know, and she hasn't a penny to go on with. Then when I saw the storm coming I thought I would take a short cut home across the fields; I was caught after alland here I am!"At present he lodged with some relations in Watchbell Street, and round him were all the Dansays and Tailleurs and Espinettes and Perrots, the Rye fisher tribe, of French originwhich was still traceable in their names, in their brown eyes, and the sensitiveness of their mouths. He nearly always went to his people between voyages, for the Rye girls took his fancy. There was at this moment a charmer in Wish Ward on whom a good part of his pay had already been spent. Sometimes he went out in his uncle Bob Dansay's fishing boat, for he was not above handling a net between his ventures on the high seas.
