Bart looked at him with a little concern in his face. “You’re good for years yet. Why don’t you ease up on the whisky a bit?”
“God damn it, do you suppose I want to add a few miserable years to my life?” Penhallow demanded. “Lying here, a useless hulk, gasping like a landed trout every time I so much as heave myself over in bed! I, who could throw any man to my inches, and better! No, by God! The sooner I’m laid underground the better I’ll be pleased!” He released Bart’s knee, giving it a little push, as though to drive him away. “Go and be damned to you! Marry the girl! I’ve taken some knocks in my time, and I can take this last one.”
“I say, Father, don’t!” Bart begged uncomfortably. “I don’t want to clear out, honestly I don’t! But I don’t see why you should be so cut up about it. I’m not going to be a ruddy literary bloke, like Eugene or Aubrey: I’m a farmer, and I want a wife who’ll be some use to me, not a blamed little fool like Vivian, or a cold poultice like Rosamund!”
Penhallow bit back an appreciative chuckle at this, and said: “I’m too old to change my way of thinking. It’ll be a bitter day to me when you tie yourself up to a wench out of my kitchen. I’m fond of you, Bart. I shall miss you like hell if you leave Trevellin. Wait till I’m gone, boy! When I’m in my grave I shan’t care what kind of a fool you make of yourself. You’ll get Trellick: I’ve left it to you in my will.”
Bart grinned at him. “Any strings tied to it, Guv’nor?” Penhallow shook his head. “No. It’s not entailed. I bought it with you in my eye. I want you to have it.”
“I know it’s unentailed. That wasn’t what I meant.”
“I know what you meant. No strings.”
Bart flushed. "Jolly good of you, Guv’nor!” he said gruffly. “Puts me in a filthy position, though. I’m not going to give Loveday up.”
“I’ve told you, I don’t care a damn what you do when I’ve gone. All I’m asking is that you have a bit of patience, Bart.”
A vague, half-formed suspicion formed in Bart’s mind. He said: “I shan’t change, you know.”