Of course, John prospered exceeding, for amongst his other gifts, he weren’t afraid of work.  He knew his business very well indeed, and always understood that it was worth his while to take pains with a beginner and paid him in the long run so to do.  People felt a good bit interested in him, and though they knew there was a lot to hate in the man, yet they couldn’t give a name to it exactly.  When a fallen foe was furious and bearded John and shook a fist in his face, as sometimes happened, he’d look the picture of sorrow and amazement and express his undying regrets.  But he never went back on nothing, and near though he might sail to the wind, none ever had a handle by which to drag him before the Law.  ’Twas just the very genius of selfishness that sped him on his way victorious every time.

He never took no hand in public affairs, nor offered for the Borough Council, nor nothing like that.  He might have been a useful man in Little Silver, where we didn’t boast more brains than we needed, nor yet enough; but John Warner said he weren’t one of the clever ones and felt very satisfied with them that were, and applauded such men as did a bit of work for nothing out of their public spirit.  For praise, though cheap, is always welcome, and he had a great art to be generous with what cost him nothing.

He’d pay a man a thought above his market value if he judged him worth it, and he often said that on a farm like Wych Elm, where everything was carried out on the highest grade of farming, ’twas money in any young man’s pocket to come to him at all.  And nobody could deny that either.  And he never meddled in his neighbour’s affairs, or offered advice, or unfavourably criticised anything that happened outside his own boundaries.

One daughter only John Warner had, and that was all his family, and her mother struck the first stroke against his happiness and content, for she died and left him a widower at five-and-forty.  She fell in a consumption, much to his regret, after they’d been wedded fifteen years; and their girl was called Jane after her, and ’twas noted that though sprung of such handsome parents, Jane didn’t favour either but promised to be a very homely woman—­a promise she fulfilled.

Her father trained her most industrious to be his right hand, and she grew up with a lively admiration for him and his opinions.  Farming interested her a lot, and men mildly interested her; but among the hopeful young blades with an eye on the future who offered to keep company and so on, there was none Jane saw who promised to be a patch on her parent, and after his worldly wisdom and grasp of life and shrewd sense, she found the boys of her own age no better than birds in a hedge.  Indeed she had no use for any among ’em, but made John Warner her god, as he meant she should do; for, as she waxed in strength and wits, he felt her a strong right hand.  In fact, he took no small pains to identify her with himself for his own convenience, and secretly determined she shouldn’t wed if he could help it.  Little by little he poisoned her mind against matrimony, praised the independent women and showed how such were better off every way, with no husband and family to fret their lives and spoil their freedom.