Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. I, 1866.djvu/83

Rh how strongly Mrs Transome takes certain things to heart. You can imagine that she has been severely tried in many ways. Mr Transome's want of health; Mr Durfey's habits—a" "Yes, yes."

"She is a woman for whom I naturally entertain the highest respect, and she has had hardly any gratification for many years, except the sense of having affairs to a certain extent in her own hands. She objects to changes; she will not have a new style of tenants; she likes the old stock of farmers who milk their own cows, and send their younger daughters out to service: all this makes it difficult to do the best with the estate. I am aware things are not as they ought to be, for, in point of fact, an improved agricultural management is a matter in which I take considerable interest, and the farm which I myself hold on the estate you will see, I think, to be in a superior condition. But Mrs Transome is a woman of strong feeling, and I would urge you, my dear sir, to make the changes which you have, but which I had not, the right to insist on, as little painful to her as possible."

"I shall know what to do, sir, never fear," said Harold, much offended.