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.