“Not a change can be for the better, to my mind; I shall plough, and sow, and reap, as our forefathers did, and that’s enough for me.”
“What! will you not even try the new plough?” said Marvel.
“Not I; no new ploughs for me. No plough can be so good as the old one.”
“How do you know, as you never tried it, or would see it tried?” said Wright: “I find it better than the old one.”
“No matter; the old one will do well enough for me, as it did for my father before me.” After having repeated these words in precisely the same tone several times, he went on slowly eating his supper, whilst Marvel, in detestation of his obstinate stupidity, turned his back upon him, and began to enumerate to Wright sundry of his own ingenious projects.
“My dear Wright,” said he, “you are worth talking to, and you shall hear all my schemes.”
“Willingly; but I do not promise to approve of them all.”
“Oh! you will, you will, the moment you hear them; and I will let you have a share in some of them. In the first place, there’s that fine rabbit-warren near Clover-hill. The true silver grey rabbits—silver sprigs, they call them—do you know that the skins of those silver sprigs are worth any money?”
“Any money! what money?”
“Pooh! I don’t know exactly: but I mean to buy that warren.”