to be seduced into a particular statement of the extent of the property which formed his respectability (as Anthony had chosen to put it), he got up a little game in his head by guessing how much the amount might positively be, so that he could subsequently compare his shrewd reckoning with the avowed fact.  He tamed his wild ideas as much as possible; thought over what his wife used to say of Anthony’s saving ways from boyhood, thought of the dark hints of the Funds, of many bold strokes for money made by sagacious persons; of Anthony’s close style of living, and of the lives of celebrated misers; this done, he resolved to make a sure guess, and therefore aimed below the mark.

Money, when the imagination deals with it thus, has no substantial relation to mortal affairs.  It is a tricksy thing, distending and contracting as it dances in the mind, like sunlight on the ceiling cast from a morning tea-cup, if a forced simile will aid the conception.  The farmer struck on thirty thousand and some odd hundred pounds—­outlying debts, or so, excluded—­as what Anthony’s will, in all likelihood, would be sworn under:  say, thirty thousand, or, safer, say, twenty thousand.  Bequeathed—­how?  To him and to his children.  But to the children in reversion after his decease?  Or how?  In any case, they might make capital marriages; and the farm estate should go to whichever of the two young husbands he liked the best.  Farmer Fleming asked not for any life of ease and splendour, though thirty thousand pounds was a fortune; or even twenty thousand.  Noblemen have stooped to marry heiresses owning no more than that!  The idea of their having done so actually shot across him, and his heart sent up a warm spring of tenderness toward the patient, good, grubbing old fellow, sitting beside him, who had lived and died to enrich and elevate the family.  At the same time, he could not refrain from thinking that Anthony, broad-shouldered as he was, though bent, sound on his legs, and well-coloured for a Londoner, would be accepted by any Life Insurance office, at a moderate rate, considering his age.  The farmer thought of his own health, and it was with a pang that he fancied himself being probed by the civil-speaking Life Insurance doctor (a gentleman who seems to issue upon us applicants from out the muffled folding doors of Hades; taps us on the chest, once, twice, and forthwith writes down our fateful dates).  Probably, Anthony would not have to pay a higher rate of interest than he.

“Are you insured, brother Tony?” the question escaped him.

“No, I ain’t, brother William John;” Anthony went on nodding like an automaton set in motion.  “There’s two sides to that.  I’m a long-lived man.  Long-lived men don’t insure; that is, unless they’re fools.  That’s how the Offices thrive.”

“Case of accident?” the farmer suggested.

“Oh! nothing happens to me,” replied Anthony.

The farmer jumped on his legs, and yawned.