He also looked after the estate personally.  Hodge, eating his luncheon under the hedge in October, as he slowly munched his crust, watched the squire strolling about the fields, with his gun under his arm, and wondered why he did not try the turnips.  The squire never went into the turnip field, and seemed quite oblivious that he carried a gun, for when a covey rose at his feet he did not fire, but simply marked them down.  His mind, in fact, was busy with more important matters, and, fond as he was of shooting, he wanted the birds for some one else’s delectation.  After he had had the place a little while, there was not a square inch of waste ground to be found.  When the tenants were callous to hints, the squire gave them pretty clearly to understand that he meant his land to be improved, and improved it was.  He himself of his own free motive and initiative ordered new buildings to be erected where he, by personal inspection, saw that they would pay.  He drained to some extent, but not very largely, thinking that capital sunk in drains, except in particular soils, did not return for many years.

Anxious as he was to keep plenty of game, he killed off the rabbits, and grubbed up many of the small covers at the corners and sides of arable fields which the tenants believed injurious to crops.  He repaired labourers’ cottages, and added offices to farmsteads.  In short, he did everything that could be done without too heavy an expenditure.  To kill off the rabbits, to grub the smaller coverts, to drain the marshy spots, to thatch the cottages, put up cattle sheds, and so on, could be effected without burdening the estate with a loan.  But, small as these improvements were in themselves, yet, taken together, they made an appreciable difference.

There was a distinct increase in the revenue of the estate after the first two years.  The increase arose in part from the diminished expenses, for it has been found that a tumble-down place is more costly to maintain than one in good repair.  The tenants at first were rather alarmed, fearing lest the change should end in a general rise of rents.  It did not.  The squire only asked an increase when he had admittedly raised the value of the land, and then only to a moderate amount.  By degrees he acquired a reputation as the most just of landlords.  His tenantry were not only satisfied, but proud of him; for they began to foresee what was going to happen.

Yet all these things had been done for his own interest—­so true is it that the interest of the landlord and the tenant are identical.  The squire had simply acted judiciously, and from personal inspection.  He studied his estate, and attended to it personally.  Of course he could not have done these things had he not succeeded to a place but little encumbered with family settlements.  He did them from interested motives, and not from mere sentiment.  But, nevertheless, credit of a high order was justly accorded to him.  So young a man might naturally have expended his income on pleasure.  So young a wife might have spent his rents in frivolity.  They worked towards an end, but it was a worthy end—­for ambition, if not too extravagant, is a virtue.  Men with votes and influence compared this squire in their minds with other squires, whose lives seemed spent in a slumberous donothingness.