dog
to follow you, you don't pull it by the collar; and if you want a potato
from the earth, you plant the potato before you begin digging. You are
a soldier by instinct, my good Robert: your first appeal is to force.
I, you see, am a civilian: I invariably try the milder methods. Do
you start for London tonight? I remain. I wish to look at the
neighbourhood."

Robert postponed his journey to the morrow, partly in dread of his
approaching interview with Dahlia, but chiefly to continue a little
longer by the side of him whose gracious friendship gladdened his life.
They paid a second visit to Sutton Farm. Robert doggedly refused to
let a word be said to his father about his having taken to farming,
and Jonathan listened to all Major Waring said of his son like a man
deferential to the accomplishment of speaking, but too far off to hear
more than a chance word. He talked, in reply, quite cheerfully of
the weather and the state of the ground; observed that the soil was
a perpetual study, but he knew something of horses and dogs, and
Yorkshiremen were like Jews in the trouble they took to over-reach in
a bargain. "Walloping men is poor work, if you come to compare it
with walloping Nature," he said, and explained that, according to
his opinion, "to best a man at buying and selling was as wholesome an
occupation as frowzlin' along the gutters for parings and strays." He
himself preferred to go to the heart of things: "Nature makes you rich,
if your object is to do the same for her. Yorkshire fellows never think
except of making theirselves rich by fattening on your blood, like
sheep-ticks." In fine, Jonathan spoke sensibly, and abused Yorkshire,
without hesitating to confess that a certain Yorkshireman, against whom
he had matched his wits in a purchase of horseflesh, had given him a
lively recollection of the encounter.

Percy asked him what he thought of his country. "I'll tell you," said
Jonathan; "Englishmen's business is to go to war with the elements, and
so long as we fight them, we're in the right academy for learnin' how
the game goes. Our vulnerability commences when we think we'll sit
down and eat the fruits, and if I don't see signs o' that, set me
mole-tunnelling. Self-indulgence is the ruin of our time."

This was the closest remark he made to his relations with Robert, who
informed him that he was going to London on the following day. Jonathan
shook his hand heartily, without troubling himself about any in