“What are you going to do?” “What can I do?” “Why is the largest farm unlet?” “Bad times; the chap who had it last threw it up in despair. He wanted to get it rent free for a year and half-rent for the next two so that he might carry out some wild-cat scheme of market gardening on the French principle.” “And why didn’t Mr. Dunning let him have it on his own terms?” “I suppose Dunning knows. He saw that the market garden notion was all tommy rot.” “Did he go into the matter thoroughly--scientifically? Did he show you the basis of his calculations, and did you verify them?” “Is it I? Great Gloriana! Where should I be by the side of Dunning?” “You would be there--by the side of Dunning, and you would make Dunning look silly. Why should you accept any man’s judgment without figures? Make him give you figures.” “He said it would be madness to give him the place rent free for a year.” “But you have given it over to Nature, rent free, for three years. The figures that Mr. Dunning has given you are £2,000 with a minus sign in front.” “That’s a fact. You are beginning to wake me up, Miss Wadhurst. I wish I wasn’t so lazy. But that market garden scheme--Dunning says the chap had been reading up a lot of stuff that was written about the French system, and that turned his head.” “It turned his head--yes, it turned it in the right direction, Mr. Wingfield; that farm would make a fortune for any one setting to work it solely for market produce.” “God bless my soul!” Jack Wingfield stopped dead when Priscilla had spoken--they had gone beyond the green limits of the furthest of the nets and were walking under the group of trees that had been allowed to remain standing when the ground had been deforested in order to make the tennis courts. “God bless my soul!” he repeated, in quite a reverent voice, which he assumed to counteract the suggested levity of his first utterance of the exclamation. “Have I startled you?” she asked. “I meant to startle you. I used every art that I could think of to startle you. I should be horribly disappointed if you had remained unmoved.” “Unmoved,” he said, in a slow way, moving from one syllable to the other. “Unmoved. I say, there’s a seat in a reasonable place under those trees. Let us make for it. I want to hear more.” “I can’t quite see that you are justified in practically leaving the courts when you may be called on at any moment to play your game.” “Oh, it doesn’t matter; I’ve got no chance of anything. The people here are too good for me. I don’t bother myself working up my game until the week before.” “You never will do anything in the world on that principle.” “I don’t suppose I shall; but what’s the odds? You can’t turn out a Derby winner if you have only a humdrum roadster to go upon.” “And you are content to live the life of a humdrum roadster?” “The roadster that looks to win the Derby is an ass--a fool! Now isn’t he?”