He was a yellow-whiskered, stout, red-faced and
blue-eyed chap with enough energy to drive a steamship. The folk marvelled
how he found time for all he undertook. He was Portreeve of the
district--an ancient title without much to it nowadays--and he was
huckster to a dozen farms for Okehampton Market. He also kept bees and
coneys and ran a market-garden of two acres. He served on the Parish
Council and he was vicar's warden. And numberless other small chores with
money to 'em he also undertook and performed most successful. And then, at
forty-two years of age, though not before, he began to feel a wife might
be worked into his life with advantage, and only regretted the needful
time to find and court the woman.
And even so, but for the temper of his old aunt, Mary Ball, who kept house
for him, he would have been content to carry on single-handed.
He knew the Warners very well and Jane had always made a great impression
on him by reason of her fearless ways and great powers and passionate love
of work; and though he came to see very soon that work was her only
passion, beyond her devoted attachment to her father, yet he couldn't but
mark that such a woman would be worth a gold-mine to any man who weren't
disposed to put womanly qualities first. Of love he knew less than one of
his working bees, but maybe had a dim vision at the back of his mind about
it, which showed him clear enough that with Jane Warner, love-making could
never amount to much.
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