“Not a paying proposition?” said Conroy.
“Oh,” I said, “it paid very well; but the fact is, what with the agitation about grazing lands, and the trouble about people in congested districts—”
“I reckon,” said Conroy, “that your ancestors mismanaged the property some.”
I expect they did. But I did not expect to have their misdeeds brought home to me in a vigorous personal way.
“Your father,” said Conroy, “or your grandfather, turned my grandfather off a patch of land down there in 1850.”
My grandfather had, I have heard, a theory that small holdings of land were uneconomic. He evicted his tenants and made large grass farms. Nowadays we hold the opposite opinion. We are evicting large tenants and establishing small holdings. Our grandsons, I dare say, will go back again to the large farms. I explained to Conroy that he ought not to blame my grandfather who was acting in accordance with the most advanced scientific theories of his time.
Conroy was very nice about the matter. He said he had no grudge against either me or my grandfather. He had, however, so he told me frankly, a prejudice against everything English; an inherited prejudice, and not quite so irrational as it looked. It was after all the English who invented the economic theories on which my grandfather acted. He talked so much about his dislike of England and everything English that I did not like to introduce the subject of the subscription to Lady Moyne’s political fund. He did, in the end, subscribe largely. When I heard about his £1000 cheque I supposed that he must have counted the Union with us a misfortune for England and so wished to perpetuate it. Either that was his motive, so I thought, or else Lady Moyne had captivated him as she always captivates me.