"I don't expect to be idle long. It's prudent to consider before you begin to move."
Carrie felt that Jim was getting English. He had, of course, been to McGill, but since they reached the Old Country he was dropping his Western colloquialisms. She thought it significant that he did so unconsciously.
"Perhaps I'd better tell you how things are, so far as I understand them," he went on. "To begin with, running a house like Langrigg is expensive, and I doubt if I am rich enough to loaf in proper style."
"If you want to loaf in proper style, you must be born and raised for the job," Jake observed.
"That's true, to some extent," Jim agreed. "I was brought up to work and have got the habit. Well, my farm rents amount to something, but when you have paid taxes and repaired the homesteads they don't leave very much. It seems there are people in England willing to pay for owning land; but that plan's not sound."
"Then, you have another?"
"It's not worked out. The leases of two good farms soon fall in and I may manage them myself. Then I own the marsh, which feeds some sheep and cattle in summer. The soil's good alluvial, like the gumbo on the Manitoba plains, and would grow heavy crops if one could keep out the water. Well, we have seen small homesteaders draining Canadian muskegs, a long haul from a railroad, while we have a good market for all farming truck in two hours' ride. The proposition, however, needs some thought. It might cost me all I've got."
Jake's eyes twinkled. "I reckon that wouldn't stop you if you resolved to dyke the marsh. You didn't get much money when you got the estate?"
"I did not. I understand Joseph Dearham was not rich, and when he found his health was breaking down he gave some money to his relations. People here try to get out of the inheritance duties like that; besides, he had not meant to give my father much. However, I have a rich relation, from whom I want nothing, but whom the others think I ought to satisfy."
"Bernard Dearham? Dick Halliday talked about him."