The Salamanca Corpus: Yeoman Fleetwood (1900 ... - Gredos

The Salamanca Corpus: Yeoman Fleetwood (1900)
advantages her son was entitled to expect; there was no reason why he should not.
There had been Westons at Eton from time immemorial; her name would be a sufficient
passport there, and his father could afford well enough to send him. Mr. Fleetwood
acquiesced; he could certainly afford it. In point of wealth he had the advantage of his
neighbour the Squire, though he never dreamed of considering himself his equal. He
touched his hat to him in the hunting-field and called him "Sir," though the horse which
he himself bestrode was superior in quality to Mr. Charnock’s, and their subscriptions to
the hunt were equal. The big, roomy house, where the Fleetwoods had lived for
hundreds of years, had always been known as "The Farm”, here generations of these
sturdy yeomen-folk had lived and died. They had always been a power in the
neighbourhood; always men of substance, not to say wealth; respected alike by rich and
poor; charitable, kindly, honest and proud. People called them "real old stock" in the
days of which I write — their like is not to be found now. There was, perhaps, no one
who had such a high opinion of the Fleetwood family as Miss Belinda Fleetwood,
Simon's Aunt Binney,
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who had kept house for his father before his marriage, and, indeed, continued to do so
after that event She took pains to impress early on the mind of the young Simon how
fine and honourable a thing it was to be one of the race, and Simon found it a little
difficult to reconcile this frequently expressed opinion of hers with the equally wellknown
views of his mother on the same subject. In Simon's own estimation Aunt
Binney ranked much lower than either of his parents; she made excellent tarts, not to
speak of elder wine and raspberry vinegar, and when in a good humour she related
anecdotes about his father's boyhood which made her a delightful companion; but she
had a way of looking at his mother, and sniffing when the latter made a remark, which
Simon violently resented; and when he grew older he discovered that Aunt Binney
actually thought her brother had been foolish in making such a marriage. On the whole,
he respected old Susan, the cook, infinitely more, while there was no comparison
between the dutiful regard which he bestowed on Miss Fleetwood, and the warm esteem
awarded to Bill, the head man at the farm, who had gone bird's-nesting with Mr.