'Then,' went on Mark, 'he took us all by surprise by making me this proposal—to take the management of the estate, and become a kind of private secretary to him. You know he gets rheumatism on the optic nerve, and is almost blind at times. He would give me £300 a year, and do up the house at the home farm, rent free. What do you say to that, Annaple?'
There was a silence, then Annaple said: 'Give up the umbrellas! Oh! What do you think, Mark?'
'My father wishes it,' said Mark. 'He would, as he had promised to do, make over to me my share of my own mother's fortune, and that would, I have been reckoning, bring us to just what we had thought of starting upon this spring at Micklethwayte.'
'The same now,' said Lady Ronnisglen, after some reckoning, 'but what does it lead to?'
'Well—nothing, I am afraid,' said Mark; 'as you know, this is all I have to reckon upon. The younger children will have hardly anything from their mother, so that my father's means must chiefly go to them.'
'And this agency is entirely dependent on your satisfying Mr. Egremont?'
'True, but that's a thing only too easily done. However, as you say, this agency has no future, and if that came to an end, I should only have to look out for another or take to farming.'
'And ask poor John if that is a good speculation nowadays!' said Annaple.
'Fortunes are and have been made on the umbrellas,' said Mark. 'Greenleaf has a place almost equal to Monks Horton, and Dutton, though he makes no show, has realised a considerable amount.'
'Oh yes, let us stick to the umbrellas!' cried Annaple; 'you've made the plunge, so it does not signify now, and we should be so much more independent out of the way of everybody.'