With the object of definitely broaching this preconcerted harmony to his unconscious cousin, Mr Tom had decked himself in his very smartest coat and trousers, stuck a gloire de Dijon rose in his top button-hole, mounted his celebrated gray Mexican pony ‘Sambo Gal,’ and ridden across to Orange Grove in the cool of the evening.
Nora was sitting by herself with her cup of tea in the little boudoir that opened out on to the terrace garden, with its big bamboos and yuccas and dracœna trees, when Mr Tom Dupuy was announced by Rosina as waiting to see her.
‘Show him in, Rosina,’ Nora said with a smile; ‘and ask Aunt Clemmy to send me up another teacup.—Good-evening, Tom. I’m afraid you’ll find it a little dull here, as it happens, this evening, for papa’s gone down to Port-of-Spain on business; and so you’ll have nobody to talk with you to-night about the prospects of the year’s sugar-crop.’
Tom Dupuy seated himself on the ottoman beside her with cousinly liberty. ‘Oh, it don’t matter a bit, Nora,’ he answered with his own peculiar gallantry. ‘I don’t mind. In fact, I came over on purpose this evening, knowing Uncle Theodore was out, because I’d got something very particular I wanted to talk over with you in private.’
‘In-deed,’ Nora answered emphatically. ‘I’m surprised to hear it. I assure you, Tom, I’m absolutely ignorant on the subject of cane-culture.’
‘Girls brought up in England mostly are,’ Tom Dupuy replied with the air of a man who generously makes a great concession. ‘They don’t appear to feel much interest in sugar, like other people. I suppose in England there’s nothing much grown except corn and cattle.—But that wasn’t what I came over to talk about to-night, Nora. I’ve got something on my mind that Uncle Theodore and I have been thinking over, and I want to make a proposition to you about it.’
‘Well, Tom?’
‘Well, Nora, you see, it’s like this. As you know, Orange Grove is Uncle Theodore’s to leave; and after his time, he’ll leave it to you, of course; but Pimento Valley’s entailed on me; and that being so, Uncle Theodore lets me have it on lease during his lifetime, so that, of course, whatever I spend upon it in the way of permanent improvements is really spent in bettering what’s practically as good as my own property.’
‘I understand. Quite so.—Have a cup of tea?’
‘Thank you.—Well, Pimento Valley, you know, is one of the very best sugar-producing estates in the whole island. I’ve introduced the patent Browning regulators for the centrifugal process; and I’ve imported some of these new Indian mongooses that everybody’s talking about, to kill off the cane-rats; and I’ve got some splendid stock rattoons over from Mauritius; and altogether, a finer or more creditable irrigated estate I don’t think you’ll find—though it’s me that says it—in the island of Trinidad. Why, Nora, at our last boiling, I assure you the greater part of the liquor turned out to be seventeen over proof; while the molasses stood at twenty-nine specific gravity; giving a yield, you know, of something like one hogshead decimal four on the average to the acre of canes under cultivation.’