“In what way?” Mr. Johnson enquired.
The young man wielded his switch assiduously.
“Well, it’s no secret round here,” he proclaimed, dropping his voice nevertheless, “that Sir Bertram is devilish hard up. They don’t know where to turn for money, any of them. And yet with all that valuable property they can’t touch it.”
“How’s that?”
“Every yard of tapestry, every picture worth a snap of the fingers, is an heirloom,” Foulds explained. “Every acre of property is entailed. I suppose there’s plenty of money been raised on mortgages, but I think they’ve come to the end of that, from what one hears. Shame, too! Fine old family!”
“Sir Bertram, I suppose, has been extravagant?” Mr. Johnson suggested.
The veterinary surgeon glanced around.
“Well,” he said, “our friend Rawson being absent, we may venture to speak of his Lordship of the Manor freely. There isn’t a person in the county could find a word to say against him—him or Mr. Gregory either—but I should say that for making the money fly they are just about the limit.”
“Mr. Gregory is reputed to have led a very fast life in town,” the grocer interposed timidly.
“And then I don’t know as he was a patch on his father,” was the veterinary surgeon’s complacent rejoinder.