the book; just glance over the figures.'

The said figures utterly bewilder the visitor, who in courtesy runs his
eye from top to bottom of the long columns--farming accounts are really
the most complicated that can be imagined--so he, meantime, while turning
over the pages, mentally absorbs the personality of the commercial
agriculturist. He sees a tall, thin farmer, a brown face and neck, long
restless sinewy hands, perpetually twiddling with a cigar or a gold
pencil-case--generally the cigar, or rather the extinct stump of it, which
he every now and then sucks abstractedly, in total oblivion as to its
condition. His dress would pass muster in towns--well cut, and probably
from Bond Street. He affects a frock and high hat one day, and
knickerbockers and sun helmet the next. His pockets are full of papers,
letters, etc., and as he searches amid the mass for some memorandum to
show, glimpses may be seen of certain oblong strips of blue paper with an
impressed stamp.

'Very satisfactory,' says the visitor, handing back No 6 B; 'may I inquire
how many acres you occupy?'

Out comes a note-book. 'Hum! There's a thousand down in the vale, and
fifteen hundred upland, and the new place is about nine hundred, and the
meadows--I've mislaid the meadows--but it's near about four thousand.
Different holdings, of course. Great nuisance that, sir; transit, you see,
costs money. City gentlemen know that. Absurd system in this country--the
land parcelled out in little allotment gardens of two or three hundred
acres. Why, there's a little paltry hundred and twenty acre freehold dairy
farm lies between my vale and upland, and the fellow won't let my waggons
or ploughing-tackle take the short cut, ridiculous. Time it was altered,
sir. Shooting? Why, yes; I have the shooting. Glad if you'd come over.'