ings for the house--items
which seldom figure in a farmer's books as money, but we stricter
accountants know they are."

"I'll do it," said Bartley, "if you'll be my neighbor, and work it with
me, and watch the share market at home and abroad."

Hope acquiesced joyfully to be near his daughter; and they found a farm
in Sussex, with hills for the sheep, short grass for colts, plenty of
water, enough arable land and artificial grasses for their purpose, and a
grand sunny slope for their fruit trees, fruit bushes, and strawberries,
with which last alone they paid the rent.

"Then," said Hope, "farm laborers drink an ocean of beer. Now look at the
retail price of beer: eighty per cent. over its cost, and yet
deleterious, which tells against your labor. As an employer of labor, the
main expense of a farm, you want beer to be slightly nourishing, and very
inspiriting, not somniferous."

So they set up a malt-house and a brew-house, and supplied all their own
hands with genuine liquor on the truck system at a moderate but
remunerative price, and the grains helped to feed their pigs. Hope's
principle was this: Sell no produce in its primitive form; if you change
its form you make two profits. Do you grow barley? Malt it, and infuse
it, and sell the liquor for two small profits, one on the grain, and one
on the infusion. Do you grow grass? Turn it into flesh, and sell for two
small profits, one on the herb, and one on the animal.

And really, when backed by money, the results seemed to justify his
principle.

Hope lived by himself, but not far from his child, and often, when she
went abroad, his loving eyes watched her every movement through his
binocular, which might be described as an opera-glass ten inches long,
with a small field, but telescopic power.

Grace Hope, whom we will now call Mary Bartley, since everybody but her
father, who generally avoided _her name_, called her so, was a well-grown
girl of thirteen, healthy, happy, beautiful, and accomplished. She was
the germ of a woman, and could detect who loved her. She saw in Hope an
affection she thought extraordinary, but instinct told her it was not
like a young man's love, and she accepted it with complacency, and
returned it quietly, with now and then a gush, for she could gush, and
why not? "Far from us and from our friends be the frigid philosophy"--of
a girl who can't gush.

Hope himself was loyal and guarded, and kept his affection within bounds;
and a