“Not yet. Don’t need to, by Golly.”
“Don’t need to! How’s that?”
“Business knowledge. Sound judgment. Backing my opinion when the odds were against me. I doubled up my fists and stood square against the world.”
“A kind of brave Horatius?”
“Who’s he?”
“Kept the bridge or something. Was a friend of Macaulay.”
“Never heard of him. Did he keep poultry?”
“May have done; he was the kind of man who’d keep anything he laid his hands on. But how the dickens d’you hang on to this place if it isn’t paying?”
“Got money. Got money to burn. Got enough to last me to my journey’s end without earning a penny.”
He was a small boy boasting. What a lot of fun he’d have extracted from being Squire of Woadley. I wished I might learn how to spuffle; it so multiplied one’s opportunities for pleasure. But I couldn’t get as excited as he expected; I had heard him talk this way before on a certain day at Richmond.