"
"How am I to find money to buy land?"
"I'll put you up to that, too; but you must leave off moping. Hang it,
man, never say die. There are plenty of chances on the cards. Get your
color back, and marry a girl with money, and turn that into land. The
first thing is to leave off grizzling. Why, you are playing the enemy's
game. That can't be right, can it?"
This remark was the first that really roused the sick man.
Wheeler had too few clients to lose one. He now visited Bassett almost
daily, and, being himself full of schemes and inventions, he got
Bassett, by degrees, out of his lethargy, and he emerged into daylight
again; but he looked thin, and yellow as a guinea, and he had turned
miser. He kept but one servant, and fed her and himself at Sir Charles
Bassett's expense. He wired that gentleman's hares and rabbits in his
own hedges. He went out with his gun every sunny afternoon, and shot a
brace or two of pheasants, without disturbing the rest; for he took no
dog with him to run and yelp, but a little boy, who quietly tapped the
hedgerows and walked the sunny banks and shaws. They never came home
empty-handed.
But on those rarer occasions when Sir Charles and his friends beat the
Bassett woods Richard was sure to make a large bag; for he was a cool,
unerring shot, and flushed the birds in hedgerows, slips of underwood,
etc.
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