"The place just suits its master's hard miserly nature," she said. "One
would think it had been made on purpose for him; or perhaps the Whitelaws
have been like that from generation to generation."
There was no such useless adornment as a flower-garden at Wyncomb.
Stephen Whitelaw cared about as much for roses and lilies as he cared for
Greek poetry or Beethoven's sonatas. At the back of the house there was a
great patch of bare shadowless ground devoted to cabbages and potatoes,
with a straggling border of savoury herbs; a patch not even divided from
the farm land beyond, but melting imperceptibly into a field of
mangel-wurzel. There were no superfluous hedges upon Mr. Whitelaw's
dominions; not a solitary tree to give shelter to the tired cattle in the
long hot summer days. Noble old oaks and patriarch beeches, tall
sycamores and grand flowering chestnuts, had been stubbed up
remorselessly by that economical agriculturist; and he was now the proud
possessor of one of the ugliest and most profitable farms in Hampshire.
In front of the gray-stone house the sheep browsed up to the parlour
windows, and on both sides of the ill-kept carriage-drive leading from
the white gate that opened into the meadow to the door of Mr. Whitelaw's
abode. No sweet-scented woodbine or pale monthly roses beautified the
front of the house in spring or summer time.
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