Chapter 1
_ CHAPTER I
The difficulty was, in the first place, one of date--not the date of a month or a year, but of a generation or a century. Had Thorley Masterman found himself in love with Rosie Fay in 1760, or even in 1860, there would have been little to adjust and nothing to gainsay. In 1860 the Fays were still as good as the Thorleys, and almost as good as the Mastermans. Going back as far as 1760, the Fays might have been considered better than the Thorleys had the village acknowledged standards of comparison, while there were no Mastermans at all. That is, in 1760 the Mastermans still kept their status as yeomen, clergymen, and country doctors among the hills of Derbyshire, untroubled as yet by that spirit of unrest for conscience‘ sake which had urged the Fays and the Thorleys out of the flat farmlands of East Anglia one hundred and thirty years before.
During the intervening period the flat farmlands remained only as an equalizing symbol. Thorleys, Fays, Willoughb

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