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“Is that not far more difficult than anything Mr. Collins does any day? Could you imagine him doing your job even for one day?”
Mrs. Greeves laughed and then clapped a hand over her mouth as if her amusement were inappropriate. “True. Even Bert would be hard put to do my job for a day.”
“I assure you that nothing I ask of you will be as difficult as raising six children.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“My sister Mary has done all the reading and understands how to implement the four-crop system. I have a little money saved that I can use to buy a seed drill. Mary can teach the tenants how the system works.”
Mrs. Greeves’s eyes were wide with amazement. “I don’t know if this is the most brilliant plan I have ever heard or the most foolish one.”
Elizabeth smiled. “I have the same problem, but I think it is worth trying.”
“What do you need our help for, then?” she asked, pointing to herself.
“Mary and I cannot make a regular habit of calling upon the tenants. My cousin will become suspicious very soon.” Not to mention alarmed. Gentlemen’s daughters should not be seen consorting with farmers.
Mrs. Greeves nodded slowly. “But nobody will blink if you’re talking to us…”
“Precisely! If we call upon the tenants’ wives, that is nothing so remarkable. You may pass along Mary’s information and whatever equipment we need to share. We must attend a few meetings with the men, but we shall do them at night in an out-of-the-way location.”
The other woman tugged on her bonnet ribbon. “Aye, that might work. But it’s his land, isn’t it? Mr. Collins?”
“Technically it is,” Elizabeth agreed. “But your family and the other tenants’ families are the ones who farm it. Mr. Collins has no notion about farming. Why should he tell the farmers what to do? Would it not be more sensible to have the tenants decide what to plant and when to plant it? They buy their own seed and fertilizer. Mr. Collins will never know.”
Mrs. Greeves laughed. “He might notice when turnips grow instead of wheat.”
“He pays little attention to the fields. They can plant the new crops at a distance from the lanes where he might walk.”
Mrs. Greeves started walking again, mulling over Elizabeth’s words. “But the tenants will be earning extra money off Mr. Collins’s land. Isn’t that against the law?”
This was the part of the scheme Elizabeth had fretted over the most. “I do not believe it would be…if we use the extra money to repair the tenants’ cottages, just as Mr. Collins should be doing. The cottages are his property, so the money will be an investment in his estate.”
Mrs. Greeves’s mouth formed a perfect “o.” “You have thought of everything.” She paused for a long moment, staring at Elizabeth. Then she resumed walking in silent rumination. “But Bert won’t like it,” she said slowly.
Elizabeth’s heart sank. Her plan had no hope of succeeding if she failed to convince the Greeveses.
“He won’t want to listen to me,” she said, her words coming out in a big rush. “You know, I haven’t as much schooling as he has. I…My father believed girls only needed to read and write.”
Elizabeth suppressed her anger at the woman’s father; his attitude was not uncommon.
“Bert is always teasing me for how long it takes me just to read one page of the Bible. If I come to him with this, he’ll say, ‘What do you know about farming? What does Miss Mary know about farming?’”
Elizabeth was a tea kettle, boiling with indignation. “It is scarcely our fault if we have not been educated,” she exploded, throwing her arms into the air. “I have been reading a book by a woman who herself did not have much formal education, but it is a very clever book. She says that women and men are equally capable of learning. However, when women are given an inferior education, it hinders their ability to be good citizens.”
Mrs. Greeves seemed taken aback by such a radical notion.
Elizabeth was irritated; she had been on the verge of convincing the other woman. Surely her hopes would not be demolished over a petty thing like a belief in women’s inferiority. “Are we not—both man and woman—created in God’s image with rights and responsibilities given to us by God?” Elizabeth asked.
“I suppose so.”
“Then we should exercise those rights!”
“I don’t think Bert will see it that way.”
“We have valuable ideas. We must find a way to make them listen to us.”
Mrs. Greeves frowned. Elizabeth was losing to the woman’s own doubts.
