Our story is of the time when George III was king, and our scene of action lies
only at an old farm-house six miles or so from Finchley --a quaint, ramshackle,
commodious, old-fashioned, thatched farm-house that we see only in pictures
now, and which has long since been improved off the face of the earth.
It was a farm estate that was flourishing bravely in those dear disreputable days
when the people paid fivepence a pound for bread, and only dared curse
Protection in their hearts; when few throve and many starved, and younger sons
of gentry, without interest at court or Parliament, either cut the country which
served them so badly, or took to business on the king's highway and served the
country badly in return.
The Maythorpe Farm belonged to the Pemberthys, and had descended from
father to son from days lying too far back to reckon up just now; and a rare,
exclusive, conservative, bad-tempered, long-headed race the Pemberthys had
always borne the reputation of being, feathering their own nests well, and dying
in them fat and prosperous.
There were a good many Pembcrthys scattered about the home and midland
counties, but it was generally understood in the family that the head of the clan,
as it were, lived at Maythorpe Farm, near Finchley, and here the Pemberthys
would forgather on any great occasion, such as a marriage, a funeral, or a
christening, the funeral taking precedence for numbers. There had been a grand
funeral at Maythorpe Farm only a few days before our story opens, for Reuben
Pemberthy had been consigned to his fathers at the early age of forty-nine.
Reuben Pemberthy had left one son behind him, also named Reuben, a stalwart,
heavy-browed, good-looking young fellow, who, at two and twenty, was quite as
well able to manage the farm and everybody on it as his father had been before
him. He had got rid of all his relatives save two six days after his father's funeral;
and those two were stopping by general consent, because it was signed, sealed,
and delivered by those whom it most concerned, that the younger woman, his
cousin, pretty Sophie Tarne, was to be married before the year was out to the
present Reuben Pemberthy, who had wooed her and won her consent when he
went down to her mother's house at King's Norton for a few days' trip last
summer. Being a steady, handsome fellow, who made love in downright earnest,
he impressed Sophie's eighteen years, and was somewhat timidly but graciously
accepted as an affianced suitor. It was thought at King's Norton that Mrs. Tarne
had done a better stroke of business in the first year of her widowhood than her
late husband had done--always an unlucky wretch, Timothy--in the whole course
of his life. And now Sophie Tarne and her mother were staying for a few days
longer at Maythorpe Farm after the funeral.
