Roses,--and had always held up their heads. But they had never held them
very high. It was not known that any had risen ever to the honour of
knighthood before Sir Patrick, going higher than that, had been made a
baronet. They had, however, been true to their acres and their acres
true to them through the perils of civil wars, Reformation,
Commonwealth, and Revolution, and the head Carbury of the day had
always owned, and had always lived at, Carbury Hall. At the beginning
of the present century the squire of Carbury had been a considerable
man, if not in his county, at any rate in his part of the county. The
income of the estate had sufficed to enable him to live plenteously
and hospitably, to drink port wine, to ride a stout hunter, and to
keep an old lumbering coach for his wife's use when she went
avisiting. He had an old butler who had never lived anywhere else, and
a boy from the village who was in a way apprenticed to the butler.
There was a cook, not too proud to wash up her own dishes, and a
couple of young women;--while the house was kept by Mrs Carbury herself,
who marked and gave out her own linen, made her own preserves, and
looked to the curing of her own hams. In the year 1800 the Carbury
property was sufficient for the Carbury house. Since that time the
Carbury property has considerably increased in value, and the rents
have been raised. Even the acreage has been extended by the enclosure
of commons. But the income is no longer comfortably adequate to the
wants of an English gentleman's household. If a moderate estate in
land be left to a man now, there arises the question whether he is not
damaged unless an income also be left to him wherewith to keep up the
estate. Land is a luxury, and of all luxuries is the most costly. Now
the Carburys never had anything but land. Suffolk has not been made
rich and great either by coal or iron. No great town had sprung up on
the confines of the Carbury property. No eldest son had gone into
trade or risen high in a profession so as to add to the Carbury