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driven, so he don't know the difference between a well-run estate and a place not far removed from a penal settlement, where people are turned off for a trifle, and a suspicion of poaching is a man's ruin.Tenants at will, of course, whenever a lease falls in ... he is veering this way. I shall just move my hat to him, and ask him how he does. We are still on speaking-terms, after all.' They walked on in silence for a while and then Jack moved well off the path to give the pony room, called out 'Good day, sir. How do you do?' - touching his hat as he spoke.
    Griffiths returned the greeting without a smile, looking very closely at Stephen, who, for his part, saw one of those heavy, dissatisfied men, much more inclined to ill-humour than to any hint of gaiety - if indeed gaiety had not deserted them entirely, together with their youth. Victims of the power of giving orders? Of a disordered liver? Or both no doubt, together with a froward spleen and pancreas.
    'It was Burton, I think,' he said some minutes later, 'who observed that there were men who sucked nothing but poison from books. And who has not met youths and even maidens with ludicrous ideas of what is the thing for persons of spirit, and with permanently distorted notions of conduct that is acceptable and conduct that is not? Yet may not authors be even more poisonous?'
    'In the Navy there are usually people to bring a puppy to his senses,' said Jack. 'Though I must confess...'
    The confession was lost. They had reached the plashy bottom, and a snipe got up with its usual cry, corkscrewing away at a tremendous pace. Jack fired and missed: the dog looked at him with contempt. 'It serves me right,' he said as he reloaded, 'I had almost said the service was not perfect.'
    'There would be more water here in the winter, sure?' asked Stephen.
    'Oh yes, much more: almost a little lake.'
    'It is very much like what we call a turlough in Ireland,' said Stephen. 'Sometimes far from barren,' and he gave Bess a discreet but significant look, nodded towards a dense patch of reeds. She ran questing forward and within two minutes she flushed a brace of teal, and they rising straight up from their confined piece of water. Stephen hit the right-hand bird: Jack missed the other.
    'I should never have spoken at all,' he said, quite out of countenance - Bess had brought the little duck to Stephen's hand. 'You can never get into trouble by holding your Goddamn tongue.'
    'It was the gun entirely,' said Stephen. 'The sweetest little gun - comes up so quick, and, as you say, shoots wonderfully sharp.'
    Jack only shook his head; and presently, partly to gain knowledge and partly to put his friend at a moral advantage, Stephen said, 'Pray tell me about inclosures, Jack, will you now? I have often heard of them, with some saying they will save the country from starving and others saying that it is all stuff - a mere job or a series of jobs to get the land into rich men's hands and keep the labourers' wages down; and that anyhow, with the war so nearly over - these are only reported words, Jack: not my own, God forbid - with the war so nearly over, imported wheat will soon be coming in again, so there is no need to upset the old order.'
    'As for the broader issues,' said Jack, '-what is that bird?'
    'A bar-tailed godwit, I believe.'
    'I am not qualified to speak. I leave that to people like Arthur Young or dear Sir Joe; but certainly earlier on and where really suitable land was concerned inclosing the huge old common fields did by all accounts increase the country's supplies of corn. But I was at sea - or we were both in one prison or another - most of the time and I have no more right to get up in the House and prate about inclosures in general than nine-tenths of the members have a right to talk about naval matters. Yet where these two particular commons are concerned, I do know what I am talking about, and I am absolutely opposed to the change. And that is what I shall tell the committee loud