"I don't see why you shouldn't," I replied. "At any rate for a long while to come. I'm sure if any one ever earned the right to a thorough rest, you have. And, oh, Tom, no burden can be a burden with you here to help me!"
"Thanks, old girl. That's good hearing."
"As if you wanted to be told that! And by and by, when you have had a nice long spell, there are sure to be posts offered to you about the ports——"
"No, Polly; don't delude yourself with that idea. There are no posts for a sailor who leaves sea—that is, one or two, perhaps, and a hundred fellows wanting them. I should be no good at office work, among the smart hands, and the life would kill me. No, I've a better notion than that—it's been in my mind a long time, and I've been talking it over with experts, men who thoroughly understand the matter——"
"And not with me!" I interposed reproachfully.
"Well, I didn't see the use of disturbing your mind until one could do something. But now the time has come." He was quite bright and excited. "Look here, Polly—listen, dear, till I have explained fully—my idea is to take a little farm place on the outskirts of Melbourne——"
"A farm!" I broke in. "Are you one of those who think that farming comes by instinct and doesn't have to be learned like other trades?"
"I don't mean that kind of farm, but just a few acres of good land—more on the edge of the country than in it, you understand—near enough for the boys to get to the Grammar School by train or on ponies—and breed pigs——"
"Oh, pigs!" I echoed, sniffing.
"Well, if you objected to pigs, there's poultry. With a few incubators we could rear fowls enough to supply all Melbourne. Or bees. There's a great trade to be done in honey if you know how to set about it. Bees feed themselves, and flowers cost nothing—I particularly want us to live among plenty of flowers—and I could make the boxes myself. But pigs are the thing, Polly. I've gone into the question thoroughly, and there's no doubt about it. You see, we should be able to keep cows—think how splendid to give the children fresh milk from our own dairy, as much as they can drink!—and we could send the rest to a factory and get the buttermilk back for the pigs. And vegetables—of course we'd have a big garden—and they'd eat all the surplus that would otherwise go to waste, and the fallen fruit, and the refuse from the kitchen; so that really the cost of feed would be next to nothing. The pork would be first-class on such a diet, given the right breed to begin with, and what Melbourne markets couldn't absorb we might ship frozen to England."