“Dom you and your b-a-r-r-n!” exclaimed the Baronet, boiling up. “Why don’t you leave those things to your husband?” “_He’s see shy!_” roared the monster. “You’re not shy, however!” replied Sir Moses, again jumping up and running away. And thus what with one and another of them, Sir Moses was so put out, that dearly as he loved a let off for his tongue, he couldn’t bring himself to face his friends again at dinner. So the agreeable duty devolved upon Mr. Teaser, of taking the chair, and proposing in a bumper toast, with all the honours and one cheer more, the health of a landlord who, it was clear, meant to extract the uttermost farthing he could from his tenants. And that day’s proceedings furnished ample scope for a beginning, for there was not one tenant on the estate who paid up; and Sir Moses declared that of all the absurdities he had ever heard tell of in the whole course of his life, that of paying income-tax on money he didn’t receive was the greatest. “Dom’d if it wasn’t!” said he. In fact the estate had come to a stand still, and wanted nursing instead of further exhaustion. If it had got into the hands of an improving owner—a Major Yammerton, for instance,—there was redemption enough in the land; these scratching fellows, only exhausting the surface; and draining and subsoiling would soon have put matters right, but Sir Moses declared he wouldn’t throw good money after bad, that the rushes were meant to be there and there they should stay. If the tenants couldn’t pay their rents how could they pay any drainage interest? he asked. Altogether Sir Moses declared it shouldn’t be a case of over shoes, over boots, with him—that he wouldn’t go deeper into the mud than he was, and he heartily wished he had the price of the estate back in his pocket again, as many a man has wished, and many a one will wish again—there being nothing so ticklish to deal with as land. There is no reason though why it should be so; but we will keep our generalities for another chapter.