"Certainly I should grieve at that, and throw him off every farthing, little as we can afford it. But my dear boy, you make the worst of things, and you are sadly obstinate; which, perhaps, is a family failing. Men of tenfold your knowledge have proved that the only remedy, and a very easy one, offered by Providence itself, for the present starvation of agriculture, is to take to horticulture. If wheat will not pay at 30s. per quarter, fall back upon apples at a pound a bushel. And then there is jam, a glorious scheme." I saw that all reason was in vain. Lord Melladew had got hold of my good father, and tip-top prices upon West-end counters had been quoted for orchard average. It was useless to say another word. But who ever ceased on that account? "If the wheat crop is precarious, I should like to know what the fruit crop is. Two years in three give a fair crop of grain; scarcely one in three of fruit. If we turned every field into a broom of trees, would even the present low prices hold, in the years when there was anything on them? The fruit might roll on the ground and rot, whenever the season was plentiful. Englishmen cannot live on apples; and jam is only fit for children. But do as you like, sir. Do as you like." "George, I am guided too much sometimes by the way in which you look at things. You have formed very strong opinions, and there may be something in them. Nothing is more wonderful to me than the difference in character betwixt you and Harold. Harold looks at a thing all round, and is never quite sure about it. But you make up your mind without looking at all, and I defy anybody to move you." "I have made up my mind, sir, about another matter, which I came to put before you. And though I am not to be moved from it, I do hope that you will take my view. But is Bandilow to have his way?" "Certainly," my father answered with a pleasant smile, for he had formed the most erroneous opinions about me; "is no one to have his way, but my son George? It is only fair to let a tenant crop his land as he thinks best, unless he injures it permanently; and especially such a man as Bandilow, who has stuck to us, when all the others dropped off. And there is another reason. Many of the newspapers, loving, as some of them seem to do, to stir up ill-will among Englishmen, keep on declaring that the landlords form the chief obstacle to the improvement of land. The thing is absurd. You might just as well say that if you borrow a hundred pounds of me, I must long for your bankruptcy, lest you should repay me. What landlord would not be delighted if his tenant could make £50 an acre, as these people say? I only wish this fruit-craze could last."