"Well, I didn't see the use of disturbing your mind until one could do something. But now the time has come." He was quite bright and excited. "Look here, Polly--listen, dear, till I have explained fully--my idea is to take a little farm place on the outskirts of Melbourne----" "A farm!" I broke in. "Are _you_ one of those who think that farming comes by instinct and doesn't have to be learned like other trades?" "I don't mean that kind of farm, but just a few acres of good land--more on the edge of the country than in it, you understand--near enough for the boys to get to the Grammar School by train or on ponies--and breed pigs----" "Oh, pigs!" I echoed, sniffing. "Well, if you objected to pigs, there's poultry. With a few incubators we could rear fowls enough to supply all Melbourne. Or bees. There's a great trade to be done in honey if you know how to set about it. Bees feed themselves, and flowers cost nothing--I particularly want us to live among plenty of flowers--and I could make the boxes myself. But pigs are the thing, Polly. I've gone into the question thoroughly, and there's no doubt about it. You see, we should be able to keep cows--think how splendid to give the children fresh milk from our own dairy, as much as they can drink!--and we could send the rest to a factory and get the buttermilk back for the pigs. And vegetables--of course we'd have a big garden--and they'd eat all the surplus that would otherwise go to waste, and the fallen fruit, and the refuse from the kitchen; so that really the cost of feed would be next to nothing. The pork would be first-class on such a diet, given the right breed to begin with, and what Melbourne markets couldn't absorb we might ship frozen to England." And so on. Well, it was a fascinating picture, and his enthusiasm was contagious. I, too, thought it would be lovely to live amongst cows and flowers, and at the same time be making a fortune out of our Arcadian surroundings. So I went in for the little farm, and all the three classes of profitable stock--pigs, fowls, bees--in short, everything. What would have happened to us if Tom had not made a few unexpected thousands by the purest accident, I don't know. He did a little deal in mining shares, under the direction of a strangely disinterested friend who was expert at that business, and so saved us all from ruin. I may add that it was his sole exploit of the kind. I would not let him gamble any more--beyond putting an annual pound or two in Tattersall's Sweeps--because, although he thought he had been very smart, he was as ignorant as a confiding infant of the ways of money dealers, and never could have experienced such another stroke of luck. He was easily persuaded to let well alone, as always to defer to and see the reasonableness of any wish of mine.