"Well, that's all there is, though. The money is all out of the estate. Nothing more."
She said impatiently: "Well? All those villages?"
"All those duties." he corrected her. "That's the Burdon way of looking at it. What they make on Abbess Roding they lose on Market Roding, so to speak. It's that 'I hold!' business again. They won't sell; they won't raise rents when leases fall in; they never refuse improvements that can possibly be afforded. The tenantry have been there for generations. No Burdon would ever think of turning them off or of refusing them anything; it wouldn't enter his head. That's why I said Burdon House in Mount Street might be sold. It's unlikely, but I remember there was talk of it in my grandfather's time. It belongs to an older day, when they were wealthier. They'd sacrifice that, if need be, though it would be like a death in the family; but anything rather than the bare idea of interfering with the people they regard as a trust."
He spoke quite easily, never realising the intensity of her feelings. "Oh, it's no untold wealth," he laughed. "You mustn't think that."
She said after a little space, "Richer than we are, though?" and added, comforting herself with an old truism, "What's poverty to one is wealth to another."
"Oh, richer than we are. Good lord, yes, I hope so. I'm thinking of years ago, anyway. Things may have changed. I'm telling you of when I was a kid."
She gave a little sigh of relief and she made a little laugh at the mood she had permitted to beset her—that sigh we give and that laugh we make when we shake ourselves from vague fears, or open our eyes from disturbing dreams. Folly to be fearful! Life is a biggish field; easy to give those fears the slip! The day is here, night ridiculous! She laughed and turned smiling to her husband and proposed they should go in. "I've got an extra special little dinner for you—to celebrate," she told him.
He pressed her arm against his side. "And I've got an extra special little appetite for it," he said. "Makes me feel fearfully fit to see you so happy."
"Well, I am," she replied, and sighed her content and said again "I am!"
IV