With this youthful friend, Jock, the old Squire--who
then of course was young--had journeyed to Connecticut to buy merino
sheep: that memorable trip when they met with Anice and Ruth Pepperill,
the two girls whom they subsequently married and brought home.
For the last seventeen years matters had not been going prosperously or
happily at the Edwards farm. Jonathan's only son, Jotham (Catherine and
Tom's father), had married at the age of twenty and come home to live.
The old folks gave him the deed of the farm and accepted only a
"maintenance" on it--not an uncommon mode of procedure. Quite naturally,
no doubt, after taking the farm off his father's hands, marrying and
having a family of his own, this son, Jotham, wished to manage the farm
as he saw fit. He was a fairly kind, well-meaning man, but he had a
hasty temper and was a poor manager. His plans seemed never to prosper,
and the farm ran down, to the great sorrow and dissatisfaction of his
father, Jonathan, whose good advice was wholly disregarded. The farm
lapsed under a mortgage; the buildings went unrepaired, unpainted; and
the older man experienced the constant grief of seeing the place that
had been so dear to him going wrong and getting into worse condition
every year.
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