Fire in the Thatch by Edith Caroline Rivett

As the days lengthened, Nicholas Vaughan worked steadily over his ground at Little Thatch. Colonel St Cyres, who looked in on his new tenant occasionally with a fatherly eye, was impressed with the amount of work Vaughan accomplished. The garden was dug through before January was out, and then Vaughan fitted up a lean-to greenhouse against the wall of the linhey. A petrol pump was fitted to the farther well, and a second-hand electric plant was assembled by Vaughan in the outbuildings and insulated piping laid to connect it with the house and greenhouse. By Lady Day he had the greenhouse well stocked with seedlings and he had bought four sturdy young bullocks to graze in the pasture below Little Thatch. During the past month he had persuaded old Reuben Dickon—brother to the gardener at Manor Thatch—to come and work for him, and Colonel St Cyres was amused and interested to see the old man and the young one digging side by side in tacit understanding. Dickon was a bent, gnarled old peasant, as sturdy as the gnarled and ancient hawthorn trees which grew in the hedge banks, and the old man still dug with the slow, practised skill which achieved so much more than seemed possible from the slow action. Dickon was very deaf, and on the rare occasions he spoke it was in a husky roar which could be heard right along the valley.

“Thiccy weeds, dang ’un!” he would shout, as he triumphantly routed out an intractable root stock of sow thistle or dandelion, or yards of leathery runners of couch grass or gout weeds. “That’s got he, the barstard!” he would roar in occasional triumph.