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Yet, realising that, he again tried to snatch at the present, though with the difference that now he told himself that anyway there was such a long, long time before him to be young in that it wouldn't ever pass.... "That's for ploughing now," announced John-James suddenly. "For the mang'ls. 'Tes as good land as any in the place, and a waste to hav'en grass, so it is.
There the cows were gathering for the milking, swinging slowly into the yard while John-James held open the gate from the field. They were good cows, but Ishmael glanced at them critically. Cows were to be his chief concern, for the home farm was not large enough to yield much in the way of crops for sale nearly all would be needed for the winter consumption of his own beasts.
One day Phoebe happened to be alone; Ishmael and John-James were in the fields, and Phoebe lay on a plush sofa in the parlour. Ishmael had bought that sofa for her in Penzance when she admired its glossy crimson curves.
He flung himself upon John-James, and felt him satisfactorily solid and worried no more on the matter. But when, in the natural course of development, his mind began to feel pain as well as discomfort at the chill which met him from his family, he turned to his sure support for help in this also, he found a blank.
Tom had quite dropped out of the family circle made by Ishmael, Vassie, and John-James. He found the annoyance of not being received in the same circles as Ishmael and Vassie too irksome to him who, he not unfairly considered, had done so much the best and with the greatest handicaps.
He crammed the last pale, stodgy morsel into his mouth and pushed back his chair, saying: "I'll do the cloam for 'ee, mother. Lave the maiden be." John-James was a good-natured, thick-headed boy, the third in the family, and the one of her children who seemed to have inherited Annie's peasant blood undiluted.
I tell you what it is, John-James, I want you and me between us to make this the finest farm in the country; I don't want Archelaus to sneer at us when he comes home and say how much better he could have run it. Of course, I can't do it without you; but if you'll only help...." John-James held silence for a space.
He found the land in good condition, the early-sown grain showing clear green blades and the grass rich enough, while even in the more neglected pastures towards the sea where the thistles had not been refused a foothold they had been kept cut down to prevent seeding. John-James was conscientious, though handicapped by a rigid conservatism and lack of proper help.
Boase instead of for Ishmael, and when he was shown into the study he stood revolving his cap in his hands and some weighty thought in his brain till the Parson bade him sit down and say what it was had brought him. But John-James still stood and, his eyes fixed anxiously on the Parson, at last blurted out: "Mr. Boase, you'm tachen Ishmael things like gentry do belong to knaw, aren't 'ee?"
There was a good deal of coming and going between the Manor and the Vicarage, for the Parson laid himself open to no charge of alienating affections, but this visit was quick with a portentousness beyond the normal. To begin with, John-James asked for Mr.
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