"And now I think we’ve pretty well done it, sir, there’s the stables, rare fine stables they was once. Seldom less than twenty hosses did they keep in them stables in the Elmacott’s days——"
"Elmacott, that were the name o’ the folk, dead and gone they be now—Sir Nathaniel were the last, a rare wild devil of a man according to history, my old grandfather, a wonderful man he were, would tell me many a story of Sir Nat, as they called him, when I were a boy. Stories my old granddad had from his father before him—well sir," Mr. Dalabey paused, "well, sir, there it be, I’ve shewn you all there is to see, hiding nothing, a rare lot of money’ll be wanted to be spent on it, sir, and there be no disguising the fact, nor have I attempted to disguise it, as you’ll bear witness, sir, but there be this Mr. Van Norden keen set on the place and likely for to make up his mind any moment, considering of it he is at this very time, I daresay!"
"A gentleman of the name of Stimpson be the owner, a distant relative of the Elmacotts by marriage. I do understand, out in Canada he be, born and bred there and never clapped eyes on the place, nor ever likely to. I’ve got to get the best price I can for the place, seeing he be my client, and the price I’ve asked Mr. Van Norden——" Dalabey paused. He looked at Allan, he had no great opinion of Allan. "Queer and dreamy like," Mr. Dalabey thought, "not businesslike, one of they sort who goes through the world mooning——"
"Er—thirty thousand pounds," said Dalabey.
"It’s a great deal of money," Allan said, he said it more for the sake of saying something than for any other reason. Had Dalabey said fifty thousand pounds, he would probably have said the same thing.
"Open to an offer I be, but the offer’s got to come quick and soon, or Mr. Van Norden——"
"I know, I know!" Allan stood and stared out over the garden. He wondered at its strange fascination for him. Of course it had only been a dream, yet a dream so strangely real, so clear cut, so logical and why—why should it have come to him here in this old garden—why?
"Thirty thousand, sir, and that be no more than forty pounds an acre for good Sussex land by my reckoning, to say nothing of the old house and the buildings and a dozen cottages in the village wi’ the alehouse, the Elmacott Arms."