Albert Kinross

“ The farmer saw he must break and lose his contract, and this was exactly what the engineer wished him to do and on what the vindictive fellow counted. Old Arrow must come to him and come on his knees; and even then, perhaps, he wouldn't so much as look at him. It was in the thick of this crisis that George Fuller stepped in, quietly stoked up the machine, and, in some mysterious fashion, set it going; and he kept it going till the last stack was threshed, and Hook, gaping with wonder, was ready to drive a full load off to the miller's. Bank Farm had saved its contract ”

“ Mrs. Arrow, Farmer Arrow and Miss Betsey saw no change, nor hardly looked for one. “Steady lad, young George is,” said the farmer; “when Hook grows too old, I'll give him the place, and two more shillings on pay day if he asks for 'em.”
“If he'd only wipe his boots when he comes into the wash-house!” cried Mrs. Arrow; and, “He's been with us ten year come last Michaelmas,” said Miss Betsey.
V.
George Fuller was twenty-eight and a grown man. ”

“ All this happened in 1892, before George Fuller was fourteen years old; and ever since then he had earned his living and lodged with Hook the waggoner. Now, as Mr. Arrow had predicted, he was a full-blown waggoners mate, taking his sixteen shillings a week and paying his way. He had grown tall and strong, his whiskers had begun to sprout, he took his Saturday night beer like a man, and sang in the choir o' Sundays. In the long winter evenings he read and read, getting all kinds of books from out the village library ”

“ Arrow who clucked and chattered when she fed her chickens, and Miss Betsey, who always growled at him and was hard and short, but who gave him many a hunk of cake, of bread and cheese, of pudding and damson jam. Other people there were too; Hancock the foreman, who made his two guineas a week when the hop-drying was on; Allcorn, the second waggoner and his mate; and there were casual men that came and went, and hop-pickers from the town, and fruit-pickers from the village and round about, and vagrant men and women, who asked for a job and left it soon as a little money was paid out to them. ”

“ He had come round and prophesied explosions and a burst boiler. Henceforth old Farmer Arrow boasted of George Fuller as other men boast about an only son. And indoors Miss Betsey consulted his likes and dislikes when she cooked the dinner; while Mrs. Arrow, now grown white-haired and very frail, no longer made him rub his boots, but placed his slippers alongside “Dad's” before the parlour fire.
VII.
It took George Fuller four years to make Bank Farm a farm of note, to draw it up to the level and a little ahead of its most progressive neighbours. ”

“ This was a great step for the self-willed, self-reliant old man. On George's advice he drilled in new varieties of wheat, that grew more hardy, made more straw, and gave a heavier ear. On George's advice and estimates the two hop-gardens were strung and wired instead of poled in the old way. ”