The affectionate touch and the responsive words caused Rollo to turn to him as abruptly as he had broken off. "I've planned it," Rollo said. "I'm forever planning it. When I get back--fit--I'm going to settle down here for good. I loathe all that, you know," and he jerked his head vaguely to where "all that" might lie, and said, "London and that kind of thing. I'm going to take up things here. I've never had any interests so far. My rotten health, partly, and partly not getting on with people, and I've let everything drift along and let mother make all the programmes. That's how it's been ever since you went off. Now you're back again and I'm keen as anything. I'm going to work up all this property, going to get to know all the people intimately and help them with all sorts of schemes. Going to run my own show--you know what I mean, no agent or any one between me and the tenants and the land. And you're going to help me--that's the germ of it and the secret of it and the beginning and the end of it." Percival laughed and said: "Help you! You won't want any help from me. I can see myself touching-my-hat-to-the-squire sort of thing as you go hustling about the country-side." But Rollo was too serious for banter. "You know what I mean," he said. "And you--you're going to be a big man in these parts, as they say, the way you're going, before very long." They had gained the Ridge and by common consent of their horses were halted on the summit. Rollo turned in his saddle and pointed below them. "Percival, that's what I mean," he said, and carried his whip from end to end along the Burdon hamlets. "That's what I think of. Look how peaceful and remote it all looks, shut away from everything by the Ridge. We two together down there, planning and doing and living--" Percival's gaze had travelled on from Burdon Old Manor where the whip had taken it and over the Ridge into the eastward vale. He turned again to Rollo, recalled by the stopping of his voice; and Rollo saw his strong face bright and said: "You'll think me a frightful ass, you'll think me a girl, but you know I get quite 'tingly' when I anticipate it all. And not want your help!--Why, only look at that for instance," and he laughed and put his hand against Percival's where it lay before his saddle. The delicate white, the veins showing, against the strong brown fist was illustration enough of his meaning. "And you're not long out of an illness that would have outed me in two days," he said.