He had kept up his reading too; had strong opinions of his own respecting politics; regarded the colonies generally from a politico-economical point of view; had ideas on social, religious, and literary subjects sufficiently alike to his father's not to be made disagreeable by the obstinacy with which he maintained them.

He had become much darker in colour, having been, as it seemed, bronzed through and through by colonial suns and colonial labour.

Altogether he was a son of whom any father might be proud, as long as the father managed not to quarrel with him.

Mr.Caldigate, who during the last four years had thought very much on the subject, was determined not to quarrel with his son.
'You asked, sir, the other day what I meant to do ?' 'What are we to find to amuse you ?' 'As for amusement, I could kill rats as I used to do; or slaughter a hecatomb of pheasants at Babington,'-- here the old man winced, though the word hecatomb reconciled him a little to the disagreeable allusion.
'But it has come to me now that I want so much more than amusement.

What do you say to a farm ?' 'On the estate ?'--and the landlord at once began to think whether there was any tenant who could be induced to go without injustice.
'About three times as big as the estate if I could find it.