“We must buy up.”
“But where is the money to come from?”
“Brimpts oak.”
“What! the profit made on this venture?”
“Exactly. Every oak stick is a rung in my ladder. There has been, for hundreds of years, a real forest of oaks, magnificent trees, timber incomparable for hardness--iron is not harder. Who knows about it save myself? The Exeter Bank knows nothing of the property on which it has advanced money. The agent runs over it and takes a hasty glance. He thinks that the trees he sees all up the slopes are thorn bushes or twisted stumps worth nothing, and when he passes is too eager to get away from the moor to stay and observe. I have felt my way. A small offer and money down, and the whole forest is mine. Then I must fell at once, and it is not, I say, calculable what we shall make out of that oak. When we have raked our money together, then we will buy up as much as we can of sandy waste near the canal, and proceed at once to plaster it over with Teign clay. Pasco, our fortune is made!”
Jason kept silence for a while, to allow what he had said to sink into the mind of his brother-in-law.
Then from the adjoining kitchen came a strongly-built, fair woman, very tidy, with light hair and pale blue eyes. She had a decided manner in her movements and in the way in which she spoke. She had been scouring a pan. She held this pan now in one hand. She strode up to the fireplace between the men and said in a peremptory tone--
“What is this? Speculating again? I’ll tell you what, Jason, you are bent on ruining us. Here is Pasco as wax in your hands. We’ve already lost half our land, and that is your doing. I do not wish to be sold out of house and home because of your rash ventures--you risk nothing, it is Pasco and I who have to pay.”
“Go to your scouring and cooking,” said Jason. “Zerah, that is in your line; leave us men to our proper business.”
“I know what comes of your brooding,” retorted the woman; “you hatch out naught but disaster. If Pasco turned a deaf ear, I would not mind all your tales, but more is the pity, he listens, and listening in his case means yielding, and yielding, in plain letters, is LOSS.”