“Just enough to run a horse on, like?” said Joe.
“Yes,” said Willie, eagerly. “Do you think I could buy a place like that?”
“Well, of course, you’d have to make a livin’ somehow,” answered Joe, “and you couldn’t make much of a livin’ on a one-horse run; and I wouldn’t like it to be said that old Joe ever put the idea into your ’ead about it. But some day you might win a lease, or buy a piece of land—enough to run a few hundred sheep on, and by degrees you might buy a little more, and get on that way. But you want a bit o’ money to start with, or else you’ll have to work very ’ard. ’Course, though, the banks would lend you money, and you might be able to make a do of it.”
“That’s what I’ll do. I’ll get the banks to lend me money. I never thought about them. Why, it’ll be real easy. I’ll go to a lot of different banks and get them all to lend me a little; and I won’t let any of ’em know that I’ve been to the other one—see? My word! won’t Mother be surprised when she hears I’ve got a bit of land?”
“Hey, steady there!” said Joe, a bit afraid. “You’re too young yet—a long way too young to think about it. Well, you can think, but don’t go trying to git land right away. You’ve got a few years ahead of you yet.”
“Yes, that’s the worst of being young,” sighed Willie.
“Well, it’s funny, the difference in boys,” soliloquised Joe; “here’s you dyin’ to be on the land, and there was Frank dyin’ to be off it.”
“Yes, funny, isn’t it?” agreed Willie.
From that time he commenced to build castles in the air, in which figured prominently a green stretch of paddock with a gurgling creek running through it; a dear little cottage nestling on its banks, and a flock of big woolly sheep, some fine horses, and a few dogs to make up the sum total of his possessions.
“And, of course, I must have some cattle,” he would think, when completing the picture in his mind’s eye; “and a dear little pony and sulky to meet them at the railway station when they come up to stay with me.”