"My body is strong enough—too strong in a sort of way. For it shakes the soul a bit, Jeremy, to see the body living in idleness when it might be doing something useful."
"You've done your mountain of work I'm sure."
"So I have then, but maybe there's a molehill of work still left in me. I'm not easy about it and your father's not easy about it either."
"As for me," he answered, "work's beginning to tell. Jane, catching the light in my hair a few days ago, broke it to me that there's a little bald spot showing to the naked eye on my crown. The beginning of the end I suppose. I'm a very weary man indeed."
"Are you?"
"Yes, mother. My nature properly calls out for rest. I don't solve the problems of life so easy as I did."
"What's the matter then?"
He did not immediately reply, but changed the subject.
"Have you heard what that man, Jacob Bullstone, has done? He made over Bullstone Farm to John Henry on his twenty-first birthday; and he's going to give Red House and the business to Peter presently."
"Yes—not his work but the Lord's. 'The wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just' in Bible words."