“Then hold your tongue, sir,” cried the squire. “Now look here, Master Tallington. If a big drain is cut right through the low fen, it will carry off all the water; and where now there’s nothing but peat, we can get acres and acres of good dry land that will graze beasts or grow corn.”
“Yes, that’s fine enough, squire,” said Tom’s father; “but what will the fen-men say?”
“I don’t care what they say,” cried the squire hotly. “There are about fifty of us, and we’re going to do it. Will you join?”
“Hum!” said Tom Tallington’s father, taking his long clay-pipe from his lips and scratching his head with the end. “What about the money?”
“You’ll have to be answerable for a hundred pounds, and it means your own farm worth twice as much, and perhaps a score of acres of good land for yourself.”
“But it can’t be good land, squire. There be twenty foot right down o’ black peat, and nowt under that but clay.”
“I tell you that when the water’s out of it, James Tallington, all that will be good valuable land. Now, then, will you join the adventurers?”
“Look here, squire, we’ve known each other twenty year, and I ask thee as a man, will it be all right?”
“And I tell you, man, that I’m putting all I’ve got into it. If it were not right, I wouldn’t ask you to join.”
“Nay, that you wouldn’t, squire,” said Farmer Tallington, taking a good draught from his ale. “I’m saäving a few pounds for that young dog, and I believe in you. I’ll be two hundred, and that means—”