"You'll have to keep the charlock down, Jerrold, or it'll kill the crops. You'll have the devil of a job." He spoke as though Jerrold had the land already and he was telling him the things he wanted him to remember.
They came back up the steep pasture, very slowly, Uncle Robert leaning on Jerrold's arm. They sat down to rest under the beech-trees at the top. They looked at the landscape, the many-coloured hills, rolling together, flung off from each other, an endless undulation.
"Beautiful country. Beautiful country," said Uncle Robert as if he had never seen it before.
"You should see my farm," Anne said. "It's as flat as a chess-board and all squeezed up by the horrid town. Grandpapa sold a lot of it for building. I wish I could sell the rest and buy a farm in the Cotswolds. Do you ever have farms to sell, Uncle Robert?"
"Well, not to sell. To let, perhaps, if a tenant goes. You can have the Barrow Farm when old Sutton dies. He can't last long. But," he went on, "you'll find it very different farming here."
"How different?"
"Well, in some of those fields you'll have to fight the charlock all the time. And in some the soil's hard. And in some you've got to plough across the sun because of the slope of the land… Remember, Jerrold, Anne's to have the Barrow Farm, if she wants it, when Sutton dies."
Jerrold laughed. "My dear father, I shall be in India."
"I'll remind you, Uncle Robert."
Uncle Robert smiled. "I'll tell Barker to remember," he said. Barker was his agent.