Mr. ——­, having been trained in traditions of ready money and easy transfer, does not like this prospect.  But as the tenant of a great farm it is quite another matter.  The larger part of his capital still remains in the ‘firm,’ and earns him a handsome income.  That which is invested in stock, cattle, horses, implements, &c., is in a sense readily negotiable if ever he should desire to leave.  Instead of having to pet and pamper discontented tenants, his landlord has to pet and pamper him.  He has, in fact, got the upper hand.  There are plenty of landlords who would be only too glad to get the rich Mr. ——­ to manure and deep-plough their lands; but there are comparatively few Mr. ——­’s whose rent-day payments can be implicitly relied on.  Mr. ——­, in point of fact, gets all the sweets of the country gentleman’s life, and leaves the owner all the sour.  He has no heir presumptive to check his proceedings; no law of entail to restrain him; no old settlements to bind him hand and foot; none of those hundred and one family interests to consult which accumulate in the course of years around a landed estate, and so seriously curtail the freedom of the man in possession, the head of the family.  So far as liberty and financial considerations go, he is much better off than his landlord, who perhaps has a title.

Though he knows nothing of farming, he has the family instinct of accounts and figures; he audits the balance-sheets and books of his bailiff personally, and is not easily cheated.  Small peculations of course go on, but nothing serious.  The farms pay their way, and contribute a trifle towards the household expenses.  For the rest, it is taken out in liberty, out-of-door life, field sports, and unlimited horses.  His wife and daughter mix in the best society the county affords, besides their annual visits to town and the sea-side:  they probably enjoy thrice the liberty and pleasure they would elsewhere.  Certainly they are in blooming health.  The eldest son is studying for the law, the younger has the commercial instinct more strongly developed, and is already with the ‘firm.’  Both of them get the full benefit of country life whenever they wish; both of them feel that there is plenty of capital behind them, and not the slightest jealousy exists on account of primogeniture.  Of course they have their troubles—­what family has not its troubles?—­but on the whole their position is an enviable one.

When Mrs. ——­ and her daughter rustle into their pew at church—­placed next in honour to that of the proprietor of the soil—­all eyes are turned upon them.  The old-fashioned farmer’s wife, who until her years pressed heavily upon her made the cheese and butter in her husband’s dairy, is not so old but that her eyes can distinguish the colour of a ribbon.  She may talk of such things as vanities, and unknown in her day, but for all that a pair of keen eyes criticise skirt, and trimmings, and braidings, and so forth, as displayed up in the Grange pew.  Her daughter, who is quite young—­for in her mother’s time farming people did not marry till late in life—­brings a still keener pair of eyes to bear in the same direction.