id Sir
James. "There is the management of his estate. They have begun upon
that already. And it really is painful for me to see. It is a
nuisance under one's very nose. I do think one is bound to do the best
for one's land and tenants, especially in these hard times."

"Perhaps the 'Trumpet' may rouse him to make a change, and some good
may come of it all," said the Rector. "I know I should be glad. I
should hear less grumbling when my tithe is paid. I don't know what I
should do if there were not a modus in Tipton."

"I want him to have a proper man to look after things--I want him to
take on Garth again," said Sir James. "He got rid of Garth twelve
years ago, and everything has been going wrong since. I think of
getting Garth to manage for me--he has made such a capital plan for my
buildings; and Lovegood is hardly up to the mark. But Garth would not
undertake the Tipton estate again unless Brooke left it entirely to
him."

"In the right of it too," said the Rector. "Garth is an independent
fellow: an original, simple-minded fellow. One day, when he was doing
some valuation for me, he told me point-blank that clergymen seldom
understood anything about business, and did mischief when they meddled;
but he said it as quietly and respectfully as if he had been talking to
me about sailors. He would make a different parish of Tipton, if
Brooke would let him manage. I wish, by the help of the 'Trumpet,' you
could bring that round."

"If Dorothea had kept near her uncle, there would have been some
chance," said Sir James. "She might have got some power over him in
time, and she was always uneasy about the estate. She had wonderfully
good notions about such things. But now Casaubon takes her up
entirely. Celia complains a good deal. We can hardly get her to dine
with us, since he had that fit." Sir James ended with a look of pitying
disgust, and Mrs. Cadwallader shrugged her shoulders as much as to say
that _she_ was not likely to see anything new in that direction.

"Poor Casaubon!" the Rector said. "That was a nasty attack. I thought
he looked shattered the other day at the Archdeacon's."

"In point of fact," resumed Sir James, not choosing to dwell on "fits,"
"Brooke doesn't mean badly by his tenants or any one else, but he has
got that way of paring and clipping at expenses."

"Come, that's a blessing," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "That helps him to
find himself in a morning. He may not know his