time. As for leaving Fairly, I tell you I can't. It's too
delightful to be near Peggy Lovell."

Edward smiled with a peculiar friendliness, and Algernon went off, very
well contented with his cousin.

CHAPTER XVII

Within a mile of Fairly Park lay the farm of another yeoman; but he was
of another character. The Hampshireman was a farmer of renown in his
profession; fifth of a family that had cultivated a small domain of one
hundred and seventy acres with sterling profit, and in a style to make
Sutton the model of a perfect farm throughout the country. Royal eyes had
inspected his pigs approvingly; Royal wits had taken hints from Jonathan
Eccles in matters agricultural; and it was his comforting joke that he
had taught his Prince good breeding. In return for the service, his
Prince had transformed a lusty Radical into a devoted Royalist. Framed on
the walls of his parlours were letters from his Prince, thanking him for
specimen seeds and worthy counsel: veritable autograph letters of the
highest value. The Prince had steamed up the salt river, upon which the
Sutton harvests were mirrored, and landed on a spot marked in honour of
the event by a broad grey stone; and from that day Jonathan Eccles stood
on a pinnacle of pride, enabling him to see horizons of despondency
hitherto unknown to him. For he had a son, and the son was a riotous
devil, a most wild young fellow, who had no taste for a farmer's life,
and openly declared his determination not to perpetuate the Sutton farm
in the hands of the Eccleses, by running off one day and entering the
ranks of the British army.

Those framed letters became melancholy objects for contemplation, when
Jonathan thought that no posterity of his would point them out gloryingly
in emulation. Man's aim is to culminate; but it is the saddest thing in
the world to feel that we have accomplished it. Mr. Eccles shrugged with
all the philosophy he could summon, and transferred his private
disappointment to his country, whose agricultural day was, he said,
doomed. "We shall be beaten by those Yankees." He gave Old England twenty
years of continued pre-eminence (due to the impetus of the present
generation of Englishmen), and then, said he, the Yankees will flood the
market. No more green pastures in Great Britain; no pretty clean-footed
animals; no yellow harvests; but huge chimney pots everywhere; black
earth under black vapour, and smoke-begrimed faces. In twenty years'
time, soot