She tried to console him.
“But, Lionel, the old school are like that. They never tell their nearest and dearest what most intimately concerns them. Look at those Ocknell girls.” (The Ocknell estate marched with the Pomfret property.) “They were given every advantage except those which teach women to earn a living. They hunted, they wore pretty frocks, and had a gorgeous time, till their father died. The son has the property, heavily mortgaged, and the girls have seventy-five pounds a year apiece.”
“Beastly for them!”
“I should think so. If misery loves company, you are not alone.”
The sympathy in her voice moved him to further confidence.
“Now, what bothers me is: how can I repay my father? If I’d known what I know to-day, when I left Eton, horses wouldn’t have dragged me into the army, although soldiering suits me down to the ground. As a soldier I’m an encumbrance on my people. They have to stint, by Jupiter! to keep me in clover. I ought to be earning money, not spending it.”
She assented with decision. He continued, not so fluently:
“With all the good will in the world, I can’t help father now. I made a mess of a small job the other day. If father died to-morrow, I should be hopelessly at sea on this big property. I should probably drop pots of money through sheer inexperience. You’ve listened to your father. You know what he thinks on these subjects. I want to ask you a straight question. What is to become of the landed gentry of this country, if they go on educating their children to spend money instead of making it?”
Joyce took her time, picking her phrases carefully:
“The landed gentry will go, Lionel, unless necessity forces them to face things as they are, instead of as they were. Father makes hay of the assertion that big properties can’t pay. They can pay, and pay well, if they are handled intelligently, scientifically. Mr. Moxon says just the same.”