ly from a politico-economical point of view; had ideas
on social, religious, and literary subjects sufficiently alike to his
father's not to be made disagreeable by the obstinacy with which he
maintained them. He had become much darker in colour, having been, as it
seemed, bronzed through and through by colonial suns and colonial
labour. Altogether he was a son of whom any father might be proud, as
long as the father managed not to quarrel with him. Mr. Caldigate, who
during the last four years had thought very much on the subject, was
determined not to quarrel with his son.

'You asked, sir, the other day what I meant to do?'

'What are we to find to amuse you?'

'As for amusement, I could kill rats as I used to do; or slaughter a
hecatomb of pheasants at Babington,'--here the old man winced, though
the word hecatomb reconciled him a little to the disagreeable allusion.
'But it has come to me now that I want so much more than amusement. What
do you say to a farm?'

'On the estate?'--and the landlord at once began to think whether there
was any tenant who could be induced to go without injustice.

'About three times as big as the estate if I could find it. A man can
farm five thousand acres as well as fifty, I take it, if he have the
capital. I should like to cut a broad sward, or, better still, to roam
among many herds. I suppose a man should have ten pounds an acre to
begin with. The difficulty would be in getting the land.' But all this
was said half in joke; for he was still of opinion that he would, after
his year's holiday, be forced to return for a time to New South Wales.
He had fixed a price for which, up to a certain date, he would sell his
interest in the Polyeuka mine. But the price was high, and he doubted
whether he would get it; and, if not, then he must return.

He had not been long at Folking,--not as yet long enough to have made
his way into the house at Chesterton,--before annoyance arose. Mrs.
Shand was most anxious that he should go to Pollington and 'tell them
anything about poor Dick.' They did, in truth, know everything about
poor Dick; that poor Dick's money was all gone, and that poor Dick was
earning his bread, or rather his damper, mutton, and tea, wretchedly, in
the wilderness of a sheep-run in Queensland. The mother's letter was not
very piteous, did not contain much of complaint,--alluded to poor Dick
as one whose poverty was almost natural, but still it was very pressing.
The girls