Ever since their father's funeral there had been a subject of dispute
between the brother and sister. Martha was bent upon enclosing the green
dell, with its clear, cool little pond; and to this end she spent all the
time she could spare in raising a rough fence of stones and peat round
it. But Stephen would not consent to it; and neither argument, scolding,
nor coaxing could turn him. He always answered that he had promised the
master that he would not trespass on the manor; and he must stand to his
word, whatever they might lose by it; though, indeed, he saw no harm in
making green fields out of the waste land. Martha, on her side,
maintained her right as the eldest to act as she judged best; and,
moreover, urged the example of her thrifty grandmother, who had planned
this very enclosure, and whose pattern she was determined to follow. But
before long the dispute was ended, and the subject of it became a matter
of heart-troubling wonder, for several labourers from the master's farm
began to fence in the very same ground, as well as to prepare the turf
behind Fern's Hollow for the planting of young trees; and neither Stephen
nor Martha could hide from the other that these labours made them feel
exceedingly uneasy.
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