Marjorie Bowen

“ It was incredibly more difficult to produce model farms, cottages, water-supply and drainage than she would have believed, and much more hopeless a task to start village clubs, recreation rooms, and playgrounds than would ever have occurred to her. Theory went to the wind in a thousand, thousand fragments.
"The amount of stupidity, prejudice, and ignorance that one has to combat!" exclaimed Elizabeth.
"Don't give up, dear, for a lot of duds," advised Connie, who was enjoying her stay at Crofts. "Every reformer has had these difficulties to contend with. ”

“ You ought to have a first-class firm of engineers down at once——"
"My friend is a first-class engineer," interrupted Elizabeth.
"Nonsense!" he answered briskly. "Nonsense, Miss Wharton! This experiment will cost you thousands."
She had brought him to the attack now, her mine had drawn him from his fortress, and he was doing battle, foot and horse, in the open. Elizabeth was enjoying herself.
"Really, Captain Lambton, if I had known that your views were quite so obsolete——"
"Elizabeth dropped a curtsy and blushed." ”

“ Elizabeth had discovered, not without bitterness, how much easier it is to manage three hundred a year than ten thousand, and how much more satisfactory to be a law unto a few rooms off the Fulham Road than to a big house, three villages, and many acres, a host of dependents, servants, workmen and acquaintances, all critical and some hostile.
"You've one comfort," said Connie cheerfully (Connie, after all, wasn't concerned very much) , "that Lambton man doesn't make a bore of himself. I should think he must be a sort of Robot. He doesn't appear to have two ideas in his head. ”

“ Every time I look at you I think of great-great-grandmother, and—and"—under her hostile stare he changed the end of his sentence—"how glad I should be if she came to life," he concluded feebly.
"A pity you didn't live in those days, Captain Lambton," said Elizabeth, "isn't it? And I'm afraid, after what has passed, that we can't possibly work together."
"Oh, of course, if that is how you feel about it——"
"I do most decidedly. It is against my principles to employ a man when there are so many women wanting work. I shall have in future a lady bailiff." ”

“ Eton, Oxford, the Guards, the War, a poultry farm. He had brown hair with a wave, and a plain, humorous face. He seemed extremely good-natured, and his manner was courteously casual; yet he, too, somehow seemed sure of himself.
"I'm afraid you'll find me thoroughly mid-Victorian, Miss Wharton," he said. "I'm one of the fellows who've rather been left behind in the ditch while progress goes by on the high-road."
"You mean you are one of those who cling to the wheels instead of getting into the cart," said Elizabeth cleverly. "Personally, I'm a great believer, I'm afraid, in efficiency." ”

“ Elizabeth thanked her, but declared that she was in absolutely no need of moral support, so Connie had to offer her company on the usual terms of a mere guest.
With a great deal of weight and gravity Elizabeth threw herself into her new task. The lawyers informed her of a codicil to the will which gave her a good deal of annoyance. Herein her uncle expressed his wish that she should employ as her bailiff or steward a certain Captain Harry Lambton, who was greatly in need of such a position.
"But suppose the man isn't efficient?" asked Elizabeth. ”

“ It is no use just being stiff-necked. You might find a life-work in looking after this place."
"Oh, yes," agreed Elizabeth. "Poor Uncle Joshua ran everything in the most archaic fashion. The place must be chaotic. And of course I know a great deal about property administration, estate work, and model farming."
"Well," replied Connie, who for a long time had seen little prospect of earning either fame or money at engineering, "I think you ought to take this on; it seems, in a way, your job. ”

“ Elizabeth told Connie about it, and Connie thought that Captain Harry Lambton ought to be interviewed, so Elizabeth wrote to him and asked him to call on her soon after her arrival at Crofts.
"But I know what he is like," she told Connie, with the cruelty of her self-assured youth. "Some poor war derelict that one can't help being sorry for, bat doesn't want. I suppose he is eking out a pension on a poultry farm."
Elizabeth interviewed Captain Lambton in the large terrace room at Crofts. After the rooms off the Fulham Road, Crofts seemed very large, lofty, and noble. ”

“ If she had not been an efficient young woman, she would have been a pretty young girl, for she did not really need glasses—they were just part of her kit, like an officer's epaulettes—and her hair was the kind that wanted so hard to be long and curly that she had to crop it every week. ”

“ Her mother had recently married again and gone to America, and Elizabeth lived with a friend of the same type in rooms, that were fairly cheap and decidedly picturesque, somewhere off the Fulham Road. Elizabeth was studying for the Bar ”