Truth be told again, Alan Lewrie thought the life of the rural gentleman farmer stank, in more ways than one, no matter it was the fondest wish of every successful man to make his pile, get acres and aspire to the squirearchy. It was… shit! Of the most unabidable sort! And fast as he strove to shovel it away, here came more.

His sheep, for instance. He squirmed on the cold saddle as he contemplated them. The farm (the rented farm, he reminded himself) was awash in the smelly things-most of Surrey was these days-unutterably stupid, messy, foolish… and shit-bedaubed. Even a goat could manage to keep a reasonably clean nether end, though they did stink like badgers.

Swine-there's chapter and verse for you, too, he thought. And chickens! Lord, what a foetid reek the henyard bore. It was a wonder a self-respecting fox would have to go at 'em, 'thout holding his nose! And cattle, I ask you, he grunted, his neck burning with revulsion. Fat, shambling, lanky-hipped, floppy beasts, capable of veritable broadsides of loose, flat, disordered ordure, shot off by the barrico, whenever and wherever they wished. Stinky his city of London might be, brassy and corrupt a warship might become, but it was never a tenth as bad as a working farm. Sweet as hay and clover were in the spring, the gardens' romantic aromas, soon as one inhaled a restoring lungful of bucolic bliss, here came some reek from things best hung in the curing house as meat, revolting one! Or plopped all over one's best pair of top boots.

It was tempting to think that now his Granny Lewrie had passed to Her Great Reward and had left him quite well-off in her will, he and Caroline could move to London, and use the farm as a spring and summer retreat; hire an estate agent to look aiter it for them. It did, in spite of his ignorance, turn a pretty penny or two, enough to qualify him as a voter. Then he could nod and smile on his rare visits, chortle over the books when they showed profit and call out "Carry on!" to some experienced and knowledgeable underling, leaving him leisure time for horses, for amusements. For a real life!