“Well, your dear mother left you her fortune when she died—it amounts to the small sum of 200 pounds. I never told you of it before, my boy, for reasons of my own. That makes 700 pounds.”
“Will that suffice to stock and carry on so large a farm,” inquired Ned?
“Not quite,” replied Mr Shirley, “but the farm is partly stocked already, so it’ll do. Now, I’ve made arrangements with the proprietor to let you have it for the first year or two rent free. His last tenant’s lease happens to have expired six months ago, and he is anxious to have it let immediately.”
Ned opened his eyes very wide at this.
“He says,” continued the old gentleman, “that if you can’t manage to make the two ends meet in the course of a year or two, he will extend the gratis lease.”
Ned began to think his uncle had gone deranged. “Why, what do you mean,” said he, “who is this extraordinary proprietor?”
“He’s an eccentric old fellow, Ned, who lives in London—they call him Shirley, I believe.”
“Yourself, uncle!” cried Ned, starting up.
Dear reader, the conversation that followed was so abrupt, exclamatory, interjectional, and occasionally ungrammatical, as well as absurd, that it could not be reduced to writing. We therefore leave it to your imagination. After a time, the uncle and nephew subsided, and again became sane.
“But,” said Ned, “I shall have to get a steward—is that what you call him? or overseer, to manage affairs until I am able to do it myself.”