livious to everything but his own primitive, purposeless pleasures.

"I shouldn't care to settle here for good," he once said to Hollister.
"But really, you know, it's not half bad. If money wasn't so dashed
scarce. It's positively cruel for an estate to be so tied up that a
man can't get enough to live decently on."

Bland irritated Hollister sometimes, but often amused him by his calm
assurance that everything was always well in the world of J.
Carrington Bland. Hollister could imagine him in Norfolk and gaiters
striding down an English lane, concerned only with his stable, his
kennels, the land whose rentals made up his income. There were no
problems on Bland's horizon. He would sit on Hollister's porch with a
pipe sagging one corner of his mouth and gaze placidly at the river,
the hills, the far stretch of the forest,--and Hollister knew that to
Bland it was so much water, so much up-piled rock and earth, so much
growing wood. He would say to Myra: "My dear, it's time we were going
home", or "I think I shall have a go at that big pool in Graveyard
Creek to-morrow", or "I say, Hollister, if this warm weather keeps on,
the bears will be coming out soon, eh?", and between whiles he would
sit silently puffing at his pipe, a big, heavy, handsome man, wearing
soiled overalls and a shabby coat with a curious dignity. He spoke of
"family" and "breeding" as if these were sacred possessions which
conferred upon those who had them complete immunity from the sort of
effort that common men must make.

"He really believes that," Myra said to Hollister once. "No Bland ever
had to work. They have always had property--they have always been
superior people. Jim's an anachronism, really. He belongs in the
Middle Ages when the barons did the fighting and the commoners did the
work. Generations of riding in the bandwagon has made it almost
impossible for a man like that to plan intelligently and work hard
merely for the satisfaction of his needs."

"I wonder what he'd do if there was no inheritance to fall back on?"
Hollister asked.

"I don't know--and I really don't care much," Myra said indifferently.
"I shouldn't be concerned, probably, if that were the case."

Hollister frowned.

"Why do you go on living with him, if that's the way you feel?"

"You seem to forget," she replied, "that there are very material
reasons! And you must remember that I don't dislike Jim. I have got so
that I regard him as a big, good-natured child