Beyond the garden hedge the grassy meadows sloped away down to the liver; the Parsonage was so much raised that, sitting in the house, you could see over the boundary hedge.

Men with instruments were busy in the meadow.

Ellinor, pausing in her work, asked Dixon what they were doing.
"Them's the people for the new railway," said he.

"Nought would satisfy the Hamley folk but to have a railway all to themselves--coaches isn't good enough now-a-days." He spoke with a tone of personal offence natural to a man who had passed all his life among horses, and considered railway-engines as their despicable rivals, conquering only by stratagem.
By-and-by Ellinor passed on to a subject the consideration of which she had repeatedly urged upon Dixon, and entreated him to come and form one of their household at East Chester.

He was growing old, she thought older even in looks and feelings than in years, and she would make him happy and comfortable in his declining years if he would but come and pass them under her care.