Andivius Hedulio | Page 8

one slave-gang under one bailiff, if not better,"
I retorted, hotly.
"Oh, yes," Tanno drawled, "it works just as well as one slave-gang
under one bailiff. That is why you have not had to inspect your estates
in Bruttium, why you have not visited Bruttium at all, why you have
not so much as thought of visiting Bruttium, whereas you have had to
spend more than two months here in these fascinating wilds. You can
trust your tenantry so completely that you only have to spend two
months making sure they are not idling or cheating you: you can trust
your Bruttian bailiff so poorly that you let him alone absolutely."
I was more than a little nettled by his ironical mood.
"I spent three months of the year out of the past four years in
Bruttium," I argued. "I know every inch of the ranches perfectly. My
uncle never allowed me to become acquainted with anything up here. I
was his representative and factor in Bruttium. When I visited him here I
was no more than a guest and I have had to learn all the workings of the
estate from the beginning."
"Nonsense!" Tanno rejoined. "You know each when you see it. If the
tenants pay their rent on time, what do you need to know about how
they run their farms?"
"They pay cash and on time," I explained, "but the cash represents half
the yield and each manages the sale of his own produce. It is necessary
for the proprietor to understand the capacities of each farm."
"And you are proud of a tenantry," he sneered, "so honest that you
cannot trust them not to swindle you out of your just dues and on whom
you have to spy all the time to get what you should get from them."
"You do not understand," I declared.

"Right you are," said Tanno. "I do not and I do not want to."
"Just wait a moment and do not interrupt," I urged. "You do not
understand, there is no use in being a proprietor if you do not know
more than your tenantry. There are a thousand, there are ten thousand
details in which the management of the farms may be made more
profitable or less profitable, and all these details have to be watched
and must be well in the proprietor's mind."
"Could you not get some kind of overseeing general estate bailiff to do
all that for you?" he suggested.
"I can," I said, "and I'm going to get one. My uncle's overseer died of
the plague and my uncle was too old and too set in his ways to get
another, so he acted as his own overseer for the last four years of his
life. I must know of my own knowledge just how the place ought to be
managed or I can never detect and forestall unnecessary and ruinous
friction and trouble between my tenantry and any new superintending
overseer."
"I do not know," Tanno ruminated, "which to admire more, the beauties
of the Sabine tenant system or the wonders of the Sabine character.
Any other man I know would have stayed in Rome and attended strictly
to his courtship and let his estates take care of themselves. You are
supposed to be violently in love and you certainly behave like it: yet
you leave Rome and Vedia and shut yourself up among these damp
cold hills and inspect and reinspect and make a final inspection, and
delay for one last peep and linger for one final glance, where any other
man would ignore the property and be with the widow."
"I do not see anything extraordinary about it," I disclaimed. "A man
needs an income, a lover most of all."
"Income!" he snorted. "Isn't your income from your Bruttian estates ten
times the gross return from the property?"
"More than ten times," I admitted.

"Why worry about it at all then?" he demanded. "Isn't your Bruttian
income enough?"
"No income is enough," I declared, "if a man has a chance to get in
more."
"Of course," he beamed, "you do not see anything extraordinary in your
petting this property. A Sabine would use up a year to get in a sesterce
from a frog pond. You are a Sabine. All Sabines worship the Almighty
Sesterce. But to anybody not a Sabine it is amazing to see a lover
postponing prayers to Lord Cupid until he has finished the last detail of
his ceremonial duties to Chief Cash, Greatest and Best."
CHAPTER II
A COUNTRY DINNER
Just then Tanno caught sight of a horseman approaching up the valley.
I looked where he pointed.
"That will be Entedius Hirnio," I said. "Of my dinner guests he lives
furthest away and so he always comes in first