The improvements on that portion of Burley New Farm more immediately adjoining the steading had gone merrily on, and in a year or two, after fencing and clearing the land, a rough style of agriculture was commenced. The ploughs were not very first-class, and the horses were oxen—if I may make an Irish bull. They did the work slowly but well. They had a notion that every now and then they ought to be allowed to go to sleep for five minutes. However, they were easily roused, and just went on again in a dreamy kind of way.
The land did not require much coaxing to send up crops of splendid wheat. It was a new-born joy to Bob and Archie to ride along their paddocks, and see the wind waving over the growing grain, making the whole field look like an inland sea.
“What would your father say to a sight like that?” said Bob one morning while the two were on their rounds.
“He would start subsoiling ploughs and improve it.”
“I don’t know about the improvement, Archie, but I’ve no doubt he would try. But new land needs little improving.”
“Maybe no; but mind you, Bob, father is precious clever, though I don’t hold with all his ways. He’d have steam-ploughs here, and steam-harrows too. He’d cut down the grain to the roots by steam-machines, or he’d have steam-strippers.”
“But you don’t think we should go any faster?”
“Bob, I must confess I like to take big jumps myself. I take after my father in some things, but after my Scottish ancestors in others. For instance, I like to know what lies at the other side of the hedge before I put my horse at it.”
The first crops of wheat that were taken off the lands of Burley New Farm were gathered without much straw. It seemed a waste to burn the latter; but the distance from the railway, and still more from a market-town, made its destruction a necessity.
Nor was it altogether destruction either; for the ashes served as a fertiliser for future crops.