“What is it, sir? Are you going to defend Chris?”
“No, sir; I wasn’t thinking about what he said, but about the way everything we have planted fails. I can’t understand it.”
“Can’t you, my boy?”
“No, sir. We all came here from England, didn’t we, to seek for health?”
“That’s right, Ned.”
“Father gave up his living in Derbyshire because if he had stopped any longer he would have died.”
“Yes, Ned, and Mr Wilton gave up his practice as a lawyer because his doctor said that he was in the last stage of consumption.”
“But you didn’t, sir.”
“I was not his attendant, my boy. I had never seen him or Mr Wilton till I met them here on this land they have taken up.”
“Did you think they’d die, sir?”