It is said
that when he bought an estate he would not decide to pay the price
till he had walked over every single acre with his own two feet, and
prodded the soil at every point with his own spud, to test its
quality, which, if we regard the extent of his properties, must have
been a stiff business for him.
At the time I am speaking of he was a man over eighty, and his son
was dead; but he had two grandsons, the eldest of whom, his
namesake, was married, and was shortly expecting issue. Just then
the grandfather was taken ill, for death, as it seemed, considering
his age. By his will the old man had created an entail (as I
believe the lawyers call it), devising the whole of the estates to
his elder grandson and his issue male, failing which, to his younger
grandson and his issue male, failing which, to remoter relatives,
who need not be mentioned now.
While old Timothy Petrick was lying ill, his elder grandson's wife,
Annetta, gave birth to her expected child, who, as fortune would
have it, was a son. Timothy, her husband, through sprung of a
scheming family, was no great schemer himself; he was the single one
of the Petricks then living whose heart had ever been greatly moved
by sentiments which did not run in the groove of ambition; and on
this account he had not married well, as the saying is; his wife
having been the daughter of a family of no better beginnings than
his own; that is to say, her father was a country townsman of the
professional class.
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