Bobby blamed himself for having been so prompt in reply.
“The end of this month, too, I’ll have you both sent to school,” continued the farmer with a look of hearty good-will, that Tim thought would have harmonised better with a promise to give them jam-tart and cream. “It’s vacation time just now, and the schoolmaster’s away for a holiday. When he comes back you’ll have to cultivate mind as well as soil, my boys, for I’ve come under an obligation to look after your education, and even if I hadn’t, I’d do it to satisfy my own conscience.”
The couleur-de-rose with which Bob and Tim had begun to invest their future faded perceptibly on hearing this. The viands, however, were so good that it did not disturb them very much. They ate away heartily, and in silence. Little Martha was not less diligent, for she had been busy all the morning in the dairy and kitchen, playing, rather than working, at domestic concerns, yet in her play doing much real work, and acquiring useful knowledge, as well as an appetite.
After dinner the farmer rose at once. He was one of those who find it unnecessary either to drink or smoke after meals. Indeed, strong drink and tobacco were unknown in his house, and, curiously enough, nobody seemed to be a whit the worse for their absence. There were some people, indeed, who even went the length of asserting that they were all the better for their absence!
“Now for the hard work I promised you, boys; come along.”
Chapter Twenty.
Occupations at Brankly Farm.
The farmer led our two boys through a deliciously scented pine-wood at the rear of his house, to a valley which seemed to extend and widen out into a multitude of lesser valleys and clumps of woodland, where lakelets and rivulets and waterfalls glittered in the afternoon sun like shields and bands of burnished silver.