She assented with decision. He continued, not so fluently:
“With all the good will in the world, I can’t help father now. I made a mess of a small job the other day. If father died to-morrow, I should be hopelessly at sea on this big property. I should probably drop pots of money through sheer inexperience. You’ve listened to your father. You know what he thinks on these subjects. I want to ask you a straight question. What is to become of the landed gentry of this country, if they go on educating their children to spend money instead of making it?”
Joyce took her time, picking her phrases carefully:
“The landed gentry will go, Lionel, unless necessity forces them to face things as they are, instead of as they were. Father makes hay of the assertion that big properties can’t pay. They can pay, and pay well, if they are handled intelligently, scientifically. Mr. Moxon says just the same.”
“Moxon said that, did he? Probably about this very property? Ah! I thought so. Please go on.”
“What applies to our great manufacturing industries, so Mr. Moxon says, applies also to the land question. Manufacturers who refuse to scrap obsolete machinery are scrapped themselves. The inventive genius of this country is marvellous. What made the Germans rich?”
“Mr. Moxon told me. A process for reducing refractory iron ores which was invented by an Englishman. This estate has been worked upon the same conservative lines for generations. These lines are worked out.”
Her voice died away. Lionel was tremendously impressed. What a clever little woman it was, to be sure! But a jealous pang pierced him. If he could talk, like Moxon——! And how closely she must have listened to the beggar to repeat, as she did, his very words; for he divined that they were not her words. And Moxon was coming back, confound him! He felt absurdly cheap and small, when he compared himself to Moxon. Unable to answer Moxon out of his own pitiful inexperience, he found himself repeating words often in the Squire’s mouth.
“Of course, Joyce, this scrapping process is costly. Intensive culture, on any large scale, means a large output of capital. Reconstruction isn’t quite as easy as Moxon thinks.”
“You had better talk to Mr. Moxon about that.”