This was Hal's question. Hal always came straight to the point, as if he had a right to know; and his grandfather seldom, if ever, put him off.
"Because," answered he, "the time has arrived when he must make way for a better man."
"But surely, grandfather," said Hal, "you won't turn him away, after all the years he has been bailiff. Why! Ever since mother first brought us to live with you."
"Ay, and before that," broke in the Squire regretfully. "When I thought your poor father would have been Squire after me. Twenty-seven years Farmer Bluff has lived on that farm; but—"
"But it isn't fair to turn him out because he's getting old, grandfather," interrupted Hal, with a bold familiarity that no one else would have dared to use towards the old gentleman.
"Tut, tut, lad," rejoined the Squire. "Who said was because he was too old?"
"Well, grandfather," put in Sigismund, who according to size would be the next youngest to Hal, "you said 'a better man.'"
"Better doesn't always mean younger," said Hal eagerly; "does it, grandfather?"
"Nor does younger mean better," returned the Squire. "I always like to think of my eighty-four years as a token of God's favour."
"Good people generally live to be old, don't they?" suggested Sigismund, straying from the point at issue. "In the Bible they did."