Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/499

Rh young and strong, and the colony is young and strong, madam. Eight years old! What shall I give you for a three thousand pound purchase made now, three years hence? Just think of that," said the tall man, "just turn that over a time or two," nodding solemnly to my brother, and then my sister-in-law, and then cautiously glancing at the menacing beam, and with a low duck, diving out of the house.

"What a strange fellow!" said Uriah. "But how true!" said Mrs. Tattenhall.

"How true! What true?" asked Uriah, astonished.

Why," said Mrs. Tattenhnll, "what he says. It is truth, Uriah; we must buy as much as we can."

"But," said Uriah, "only the other day he said the clean contrary. He said everybody was ruined."

"And he says so still," added Mrs. Tattenhall, enthusiastically, "but not the colony. We must buy! We must buy, and wait. One day we shall reap a grand harvest."

"Ah!" said Uriah: "so you let yourself, my dear Maria, be thus easily persuaded, because Robinson wants to sell, and thinks we have money?"

"Is it not common sense, however? Is it not the plainest sense?" asked Mrs. Tattenhall. "Do you think this colony is never to recover?"

"Never is a long while," said Uriah. " But still—"

"Well, we will think it over, and see how the town lies and where the chief point of it will be, probably, hereafter; and if this Mr. Robinson has any land in such places, I would buy of him, because he has given us the first idea of it."

They thought and looked, and the end of it was, that very soon they had bought up land and houses, chiefly from Robinson, to the amount of two thousand pounds. Robinson fain would not have sold, but have mortgaged; and that fact "was the most convincing proof that he was sincere in his expectations of a revival. Time went on. Things were more and more hopeless. Uriah, who had nothing else to do, set on and cultivated a garden. He had plenty of garden ground, and his boys helped him, and enjoyed it vastly. As the summer went on, and melons grew ripe, and there were plenty of green peas and vegetables, by the addition of meat, which was now