"Sorry, Jerrold, to be so slow."
But Jerrold wouldn't see it.
They had gone down to the Manor Farm, he and Jerrold and Anne. He wanted
to show Jerrold the prize stock and what heifers they could breed from
next year. "I should keep on with the short horns. You can't do better,"
he said.
Then they had gone up the fields to see if the wheat was ready for
cutting yet. And he had kept on telling Jerrold what crops were to be
sown after the wheat, swedes to come first, and vetch after the swedes,
to crowd out the charlock.
"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.
It was as if he were thinking that when Sutton died he might not be
there. And he had said that Sutton wouldn't last long. Anne looked at
Jerrold. But Jerrold's face was happy. He didn't see it.
They left Uncle Robert in the library, drinking hot water for tea.
"Jerrold," Anne said, "I'm sure Uncle Robert's ill."
"Oh no. It's only indigestion. He'll be as right as rain in a day or
two."
Jerrold struggled with his sleep, pushing it back and back before him,
trying to remember.