But Archie had not done that; and between you and me and the binnacle, not to let it go any further, I think he did an extremely sensible thing in sticking to the money.
Oh, but plenty of young men who do not have uncles to send them fifty-pound notes to help them over their first failures, do very well without such assistance! So let no intending emigrant be disheartened.
Again, as to Winslow’s wild way of borrowing said 50 pounds, and changing it into 300 pounds, that was another “fluke,” and a sort of thing that might never happen again in a hundred years.
Pride did come in again, however, with a jump—with a gay Northumbrian bound—when Bob and Harry seriously proposed that Johnnie, as the latter still called him, should put his money in the pool, and share and share alike with them.
“No, no, no,” said the young Squire, “don’t rile me; that would be so obviously unfair to you, that it would be unfair to myself.”
When asked to explain this seeming paradox, he added:
“Because it would rob me of my feeling of independence.”
So the matter ended.
But through the long-headed kindness and business tact of Winslow, all three succeeded in getting farms that adjoined, though Archie’s was but a patch compared to the united great farms of his chums, that stretched to a goodly two thousand acres and more, with land beyond to take up as pasture.
But then there was stock to buy, and tools, and all kinds of things, to say nothing of men’s and boys’ wages to be paid, and arms and ammunition to help to fill the larder.