"Let me finish. When I die, and you or Norman come here, Cynthia and the girls will have to live at the Grange. It's much too big a place for them already. I dare say you'd get a big rent for it; but that's not what they'll want. They would have had enough to live on there as it used to be; but with the way things are going now it'll be a place that will want a lot of keeping up. It will want a good deal more keeping up than this." "Of course you're right to think about the future, old fellow." Sir William spoke more slowly, leaning forward in his chair with his elbows on his knees and tapping his stick on the turf. "I've thought about it a good deal, too. Things are altered now--unfortunately. I come into it more, don't I?--I and Norman." "Oh, yes, of course. Still, I'm not an old man yet. And Cynthia.... It's not out of the question.... But we needn't think of that. The chances are you'll succeed me. But for a good many years yet--in the ordinary way--I shall be here at Hayslope, and--" He did not finish, and Sir William did not help him out. He frowned a little as he sat looking down on the grass and tapping his stick, but there was no alteration in the kindly tone of his speech when he said after a time: "If Cynthia bears you another son, nobody will be more pleased than I shall. Some people might think I didn't mean that, but you know better. That's why we can talk over the future between us without misunderstanding one another." Colonel Eldridge stirred in his seat. "Oh, yes, Bill," he said. "You don't want to step into my shoes yet a while. I know that well enough. You will step into them sooner or later. I know that, too. We shan't have any more children. And as for what's to come after us, Norman will make a better squire of Hayslope than poor Hugo could have done. I wouldn't say so to Cynthia--I don't know that I'd say it to anybody but you--but I've come to see that the poor fellow had made too much of a mess of things for us to have hoped that he'd ever pull up. I feel no bitterness against him--God knows. I did; but that's all wiped out. I loved him when he was a little fellow, and I never really left off loving him, though he brought me a lot of trouble. Now I'm free to love his memory. He did well at the end." "Oh, yes. You can be proud of him. There was lots of good in him, and it came out at the last. No need to think about all the rest. I haven't thought about it for a long time." "Well, I've got to think of it occasionally, I'm afraid. Things are still difficult because of poor Hugo. But--" "Look here, old fellow--why don't you let me wipe all that off? I can do it without bothering myself in the least." "Thanks, Bill, you're very good. But I'll bear my own burdens."