“To be sure; so I did!” he exclaimed, eagerly reaching down a rolled-up plan, and spreading it upon the table. “Now look here, Ada; this will be an expensive affair, and we shall reap no benefit from it ourselves, for it is a matter of years and years; but that young dog will have an estate which will make him hold up his head as high as he likes. Now, see here—this is my side. I’ve bought these two thousand acres of worthless marshland—worthless save for peat-digging and wild-duck shooting. This is the piece, Ada, love,” he said, solemnly, as he laid a finger upon the plan. “I chose this so that I might preserve the pine-wood untouched.”
He stopped to gaze up in his wife’s face, and as she recalled the past, she bent over him until her cheek touched his forehead.
“Well, love,” he said, raising himself and speaking cheerfully, “we—that is to say, the other purchasers and myself—dig a large drain, or canal, through our marsh pieces right to the Trent, and fit our drain with sluice-gates, so that at every high tide we flood our low tract of marsh with the thick, muddy waters loaded with the alluvial soil of Yorkshire and our own county, brought down by many a river and stream, which, after the fashion of the hill floods, by slow and almost imperceptible degrees, is deposited upon our peat and rushes, in a heavy, unctuous, wondrously rich mud, or warp, till, in the course of time, we have it two, three, and in places even four feet deep. Then comes the change: we cease flooding, and give all our attention to thoroughly draining our warp land, which now becomes, in place of marsh, fit only to grow water-plants, a rich and fertile soil. Nature has converted it for us; and twenty years hence, instead of marsh, Master Brace will have a couple of thousand acres of the best soil in England. That is all I can do for him, and after all I don’t think that it will be such a very mean heritage. Now, love, what do you say to that?”
Mrs Norton’s answer was a cry of joy: for at that moment, free of step, bright and happy, in came Brace Norton, to be strained again and again to his mother’s breast.
There was a grim smile of pride and pleasure upon Captain Norton’s scarred face, as, after hastily rolling up his plans, he caught at his son’s disengaged hand.
“My dear Brace, how well and hearty you look!” he exclaimed, as he scanned the broad chest and muscular limbs of his son.
“I Well? Ay! father, never better,” was the reply. “And I don’t know that I ever saw you look better.”
“Oh! I’m well enough,” said Captain Norton. “But, my dear boy, what a pity it is that you did not join our service! With that build of yours, you would have drilled as upright as a dart.”
“And broken my heart over the pipe-clay, eh, father?” laughed the young man. “I’m right enough—make a tolerable sailor, perhaps, but I should have been a poor soldier. But, I say,” said Brace, after half-an-hour’s questioning and answering, “I have had quite an adventure coming over: came across a fine, fierce, grey old fellow, with—oh! mamma, the most lovely girl you ever saw in your life!”
“Pooh!” laughed the Captain, “the sailor’s Poll. What asses you boys do make of yourselves!”