Honor, who had enjoyed educational privileges as a result of some self-denial on the part of both of her parents, now reigned mistress at "Endicott's," as Bear Down Farm was commonly called. At first sovereign power proved a source of pleasure; now, blunted by nearly a year of experience, her rule occasioned no particular delight.
Presently Christopher led his companion beside the great beech and pointed to a leafy tent beneath it.
"Come into my parlour! I found this delicious place yesterday, and I said to myself, 'Mistress Endicott may take pleasure in such a spot as this.' Here will we sit--among the spiders with bodies like peas and legs like hairs; and I'll make you laugh."
"Never too late to laugh. Just half one little hour. What are thirty minutes to two independent people who 'toil not, neither do they spin'--nor even knit, like your uncle? There--isn't it jolly comfortable? Wish the upholstery on some of my old-world furniture was as complete. By the way, you know that sofa thing with dachshund legs and a general convulsed look about it, as though the poor wretch had been stuffed with something that was not suiting it? Well, Doctor Clack says that it's worth fifty pounds! But he's such a sanguine brute. Yet this granite, with its moss cushions, is softer than my own easy chair. There are no such springs as Nature's. Look at heather, or a tree branch in a gale of wind, or a----"
"Now don't begin again about Nature, Christo; you've talked of nothing else since we started. Make me laugh if I'm to stop another minute."
"Well, I will. I was looking through some musty old odds and ends in our muniment-room last night and reading about my forefathers. And they did put me so much in mind of the old governor. Such muddlers--always procrastinating and postponing and giving way, and looking at life through the wrong end of the telescope."
"I've heard my father say that Mr. Yeoland was such a man."
"Yes; and money! He never paid anything in his life but the debt of Nature, dear old chap; and if he could have found a way to make Nature take something in the pound, he'd be here pouring his wisdom into my ears yet."
"He only made one enemy in all his long life; and that was himself."