Anthony Trollope: The Belton Estate

3. CHAPTER III: WILL BELTON (continued)

'Ah, yes to be sure. But there's nobody here that signifies. How well I remember this room and the old tower out there. It isn't changed a bit!'

'Not to the outward eye, perhaps,' said the squire.

'That's what I mean. So they're making hay still. Our hay has been all up these three weeks. I didn't know you ever meadowed the park.' Here he trod with dreadful severity upon the corns of Mr Amedroz, but he did not perceive it. And when the squire muttered something about a tenant, and the inconvenience of keeping land in his own hands, Belton would have gone on with the subject had not Clara changed the conversation. The squire complained bitterly of this to Clara when they were alone, saying that it was very heartless.

She had a little scheme of her own a plan arranged for the saying of a few words to her cousin on the earliest opportunity of their being alone together and she contrived that this should take place within half an hour after his arrival, as he went through the hall up to his room. 'Mr Belton,' she said, 'I'm sure you will not take it amiss if I take a cousin's privilege at once and explain to you something of our way of living here. My dear father is not very strong.'

'He is much altered since I saw him last.'

'Oh, yes. Think of all that he has had to bear! Well, Mr Belton, the fact is, that we are not so well off as we used to be, and are obliged to live in a very quiet way. You will not mind that?'

'Who? I?'

'I take it very kind of you, your coming all this way to see us'

'I'd have come three times the distance.'

'But you must put up with us as you find us, you know. The truth is we are very poor.'